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More Update Post: 08_13_2008
Home-heating, in the winter, is the major
expense for homeowners in the cold climate regions, outside of the
cost of purchase of a home together with the
attendant mortgage
payment. However, with the high cost of fuels,
means of providing heat to the homes, other than the use of energy
directly from utility corporations, is essential to the overall
healthful living of home-owners. Alternative energy sources to the
utility corporations are biofuels:
ethanol, and
biodiesel, the production technologies of
which have been effectively analyzed for development, and the direct
use of waste and virgin vegetable oils. All these provide the fuel
that is usable for home heating. The adoption of these fuel sources
present to a homeowner entirely different considerations as per the
analysis.
There have been the analyses -
to that end of producing one form of energy source or another,
though all are of the
Combustible Energy Sources categories - of
several biotechnology processes: The analysis of the controlled
microbial digestion of
industrial waste whey into ethanol; The analysis of the
recycle of waste oil into bio-diesel fuel; The analysis of the
recycle of
edible wastes into liquid biofuel mixture of alcohols: Ethanol,
Butanol and Propanol; and biogas with the constituents as carbon dioxide, methane
and hydrogen. Irrespective of which of these biotechnologies is
actually specified for adoption for the production of the bio-fuel,
or even if the home-owner chooses to directly use vegetable oil as
the fuel, the home heating capacity is provided with the mere
retrofitting of a Portable
BioEnergy Steam Generator with the existing
heating delivery lines of the home, followed by the implementation
of the biofuel process
system. In the most restricted cases however, where the
home-owner keeps an existing water heater, the homeowner may only
need to replace or modify the gas or oil burner that is deployed
with the current water heater.
Portable BioEnergy Steam
Generator Design
The biofuel steam generator
technology consists of three sections but are integrated
together:
- Biofuel Burner
- Combustion Chamber
- Water Boiler
The
Biofuel Burner
though fuel specific holds the fuel and injects it into the
Combustion Chamber where the fuel droplets under combustion
resulting in effluent gases that are of high temperature. The
Combustion Chamber is of a furnace design, that enables the chemical
reaction to occur at intense temperature while allowing thorough
mixing of the |
hot gases before being discharged
into the water boiler section. The Water Boiler is simply mostly a
heat exchanger of the Vertical Thermosyphon Reboiler, VTSR,
category. In consistence with the features of a VTSR the Water
Boiler ensures that the water fed boils into steam and is also
replaced continuously as the volume of the water drops. As such the
VTSR is of such size as to meet the required heat load evaluated for
the given residence. The outlet of the steam - a fairly high
pressure steam - is fitted with flanges and adapters for the flanges
to allow for a smooth retrofit with standard home heating
piping-system
Effectively, the
mission-critical equipment of the Portable BioEnergy Steam Generator
is the Biofuel Burner. The
base equipment configuration is customized to accommodate
specificity to
the fuel of target for burning, given that the fluid dynamic
properties of each fuel is different. These properties directly
impact the performance of the 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 as per the fuel
produced from edible waste.
On the basis of the combustion
technologies for which designs are available, the Fuel Burner that
can be co-deployed with the portable steam generation for the
purposes of home-heating include
vegetable oils, both virgin and waste oils,
ethanol, butanol,
syngas ( also known as wood-gas and town-gas),
biodiesel, and
mixed alcohols
and multi-phase fuel. These are all burners and as such
are of low thrust and therefore compatible for use with
portable bioenergy
process technologies.
Even then each class of fuel
has use considerations: Ethanol generally has water and as such the
flame may extinguish under abnormal airflow conditions, and
therefore must be monitored closely; Syn-gas has hydrogen and carbon
monoxide in it and as such is poisonous and also must be monitored
closely to ensure that it is always on; The vegetable oils fuel
storage tank must be kept at room temperature in the least to avoid
congealing during periods of low temperature, and more so if the oil
is of the wasted category; The biodiesel fuel also has the tendency
to solidify easily during periods of low temperature and must also
be kept warm enough to remain liquid, besides, such warming should
also prevent biodegradation of the fuel prior to being used up.
Socially Responsible Recycling
There is yet a socially
responsible approach to recycling the biofuel and the biogas. This
approach does not yield as much energy as obtains with the |
use of
dual combustor technology, however, this approach prevents the
discharge of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere hence the
qualification of being socially responsible.
In this approach the
Moving
Bed Carbon Recapture Bosch Reactor is co-deployed with the
biofuel combustor technology. The effluent gas of the Thermosyphon
Reboiler is used to heat the biogas being fed into the reactor. Of
course, supplemental heating may be required which might result in a loss of
90% of the energy used in heating the biogas, however, the carbon
dioxide will be stripped of the elemental carbon which may then be
disposed off instead of as
GHG
emission.
The steam
produced with the carbon is then filtered of the elemental carbon
and then returned blended into the heating system steam line for the
home heating. |
