Hi I would like to ask the community if we can set up a post for a new energy system I have been working on ,I think it works out more efficient and ecologically better , and its large scale thinking for energy systems , and now I need to check through my figures and need the views of IET thinkers for instance on combustion , post combustion chemistry , it unfolds into quite a complex system which I have been working on for 8 years , but enables us to get more energy from wastes and perhaps helps to move to biomaterials. I have an interest as environmental thinker and have designed the system to go through to government funding phases and pretty confident it works well in a number of questions around energy and environmental thinking .
yeah done some figures I guess around 200Mw to get the O2 and cooling , so around 800Mw to grid if you want , but there are so many variants and I hope I can improve on fuel figures .
I guess the basic start point is we need to dispose of wastes or recycle things , high temperature thermal decomposition works , and I think I can tune it better for lower fuel use , if we use spent bio materials (from a biomaterials economy) it should at least be carbon neutral , which works ok for the electric car and I think we have a process for making CO2 into a building material , I can increase the electrical output if required . I mean the packaging industry has done some great stuff with biomaterials , and at the moment biomaterials , that on second use make a fuel , seems a good solution .
But if it is not cost effective and makes a good business case, it is just virtue signalling no matter the environmental benefits. Have you done any cost benefit analysis?
OH I have done some runs more efficient than this, cost benefit analysis wise it works ok , as it can be fuelled by even the most difficult wastes , so the benefit is not allowing culmative wastes and reducing landfill , and in cost terms it is more than a single air drafted plant , but they are base load and with heat recovery could have a figure of near 50% KJ energy to KW energy , so be really useful in green hydrogen production , although its better renewables be used for green hydrogen production via water electrolysis., if I can make a building material out of the CO2 (a form of plaster board)it works out even better.
Had a technical enquiry …. why don't high moisture fuels burn as well as dry ones , I think its because the H20 increases the temperature of ignition..... well I guess that's one way of looking at thermo chemistry. H20 plays no part in the energy production in oxidation , and the faster you can get the actual molecules involved in the chemical oxidation reaction , the more heat you produce …. ok so far good ….. so what does actually happen to a 1cm cube of wood introduced to oxygen , well one way is to immerse it in liquid oxygen and ignite it probably with an ignition source at 200oc , because it has oxygen within its structure it could even combust under water. mmmm well if we get the slow mo guys in and burn our 1cm cube in pure oxygen gas , we first see the outer surface start to char as the 200oC temperature moves from the external surface inwards , in so doing the moisture H20 is driven off as a vapour , when the wood ignites temperatures of 800oC occur driving any further moisture and causing the oxygen to react with the carbon to produce heat ,light CO2 and H2O, this why power companies grind coal into dust before combustion as they get a much quicker heat release and much less partial combustion .
so providing the solids are in small particle size if they are pre heated or part pyrolyzed before oxidation , the moisture should be driven out of the main carbonaceous material , and hence high moisture fuels when partially pyrolyzed before oxidation ….. will combust in a way similar to dried fuels …. I rest my case.
If nothing else, the probem with wet fuel is that to get it above 100C, you are going to have to boil off all the water in it. The latent heat of vaporisation of water is huge. So it ends up absorbing a large proportion of the heat you get from burning the fuel.
Fire is an oxidation process - a quick chemical reaction. Contrary to intuition - what burns (oxidizes) is not the fuel but the steam (gases) released from it. This means that there is no combustion at a temperature where the material is not at least partially in a gaseous state (that is, the rougher the closer to the vaporization temperature of the material, the more likely it is to burn). Therefore, volatiles at room temperature such as oil, fuel and alcohol are good combustion materials. That is, to start a fire you need to start with fuel and oxygen and a sufficiently high temperature and then a reaction between the oxygen in the air and the vapor of the fuel material is created. During oxidation, heat is released in the form of heat and visible light (most often seen as flames) and unseen light (outside the spectrum of the human eye). The color of the flames indicates the temperature of the fire; The color is actually photons emitted from the heated gas. High energy photons (= high heat) will give color near the upper range of the spectrum = blue and the reverse at low energies = red. Heat is an important component because it "sustains" the combustion process. Fire will erupt when fuel with oxygen supply (or other oxygen) is exposed to a high heat source. After the fire breaks out, it is able to "supply" the heat to itself as long as there is enough fuel and oxygen. Firefighters actually cool the fire with water thus preventing one of the necessary components for combustion. Another way to extinguish fires is to choke them by using carbon dioxide. Water is not a fuel, but at high temperatures it is forbidden (!!!) to extinguish fires with water. The high heat dissolves the oxygen-hydrogen bond and the free oxygen ignites the fire.
that is correct , there is such as thing as autoignition for fuels which are specified as molecular fuels , thermo degradation is useful for the decomposition of difficult organic chemistry such as benzene and furans at around 900oC plus
