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The concerns for
global warming and the
consequential impact on life in general coupled with the
occasional spikes of the prices of home heating oils produced from
crude oil, the combustion of vegetable oil for home heating has become the
preferred option for some home-owners. Even then the combustion of
vegetable oil for supporting
distributed power generation systems such as by utility
corporations is just as efficacious for
alleviating the potential impacts of global warming. However,
the existing oil and gas fuel burners may not necessarily support
the complete oxidative combustion of vegetable oils; hence
modification of existing burners or the implementation of new
burners requires a set of thoroughly considered development
specifications, as presented in the analysis.
Effectively, the primary
equipment for the Vegetable Oil fuel Burner consists of three
integrated components:
- Fuel Combustion Burner
- Fuel Burner Base (or
Enclosure)
- Combustion Chamber
which are interfaced with
secondary accessorial equipment, an Oil Delivery System,
consisting of Storage Tank, a small pump that pumps the oil into the
Fuel Burner Base, and an optional Large Debris Separator for initial
oil filtration - deployed if waste oil is to be source. The Storage
Tank should have a well-regulated heating system that supports
real-time temperature measurement control system, and allows
functionality for variable temperature setting. The pump should also
be fitted with real-time control to activate pumping only with oil
available in the Storage Tank.
The Fuel Combustion Burner
should only be a use-specific customized variant of the basic
fuel combustion burner
technology of the combustion technologies. One of the
customizations is that an optional Fuel Filter System be
incorporated into the design to accommodate the possible use of
waste vegetable oil as feed, in order to ensure that the oil is
filtered before actually flowing into the Spray Injector. Such a
Filter System may be appended to the oil-entry port of the
Combustion Burner.
The Fuel Burner Base (or
Enclosure) has two inlet
ports: fuel inlet port, and air-inlet port. The Biofuel Burner,
being aimed for the direct use of vegetable oil, is also designed to
enable reduction of the viscosity of the oil prior to flowing into
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combustion burner for atomized
injection into the combustion chamber. Accordingly, the Fuel Burner
may be fitted with oil heating device to further fine-tune the
viscosity and flow temperature of the fuel-oil. The specifics of the
design has the oil temperature raised to a level that provides just
enough fluidity. This consideration is critical, because these
properties directly impact the performance of the Fuel Combustion
Burner - the device that actually delivers the fuel into the
combustion chamber - and as such is designed to accommodate the
characteristic fluid properties of each fluid type as well as mixed
fuel types. Further, the
casing of the Fuel Burner Base must be such as to support high
pressure operation: The presence of the Fuel Filter System makes it necessary to
operate the Fuel Burner at relatively higher pressure,
because high pressure drop must be overcome in order for
the fuel to flow through the Filter System.
Appended to the Fuel Burner Base
is also a small compression air pump that pumps air into the
Burner base as well as into the Combustion Chamber. The outlet
effectively has to be divided into two streams with one stream to
flow into the Burner Base and the other stream to flow into the
Combustion Chamber. All the electronics should also be housed in the
chassis of this pump for compactness.
The Combustion Chamber for a
simple Oil Burner may consist of a cylinder that is fitted with
modules of air inlet ports through which air is discharged into the
chamber. Of course, provisions are made to have the Chamber
interface with the Burner Base seamlessly. The center portion of the
Chamber should have cutaway of such that allows the Burner Base top
section exposing the Combustion Burner to fit in re-entrant into the
Chamber. At the top of the Chamber should be a flange - the choice
of which is to allow maximum flexibility of deployment: The outlet
stream of hot gases can be fed into a compressive flow device to
enhance the velocity of discharge for instance; The outlet stream
can be fitted with flanged bends to allow for variations of angular
installation; The outlet stream flowrate into any thermal extraction
device can also be adjusted through a Y to help reduce the stream
volume; and The outlet stream flowrate can also be regulated to
provide uniform temperature feed for any temperature sensitive
application. |
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