ORNL’s award-winning ultraclean condensing high-efficiency pure fuel furnace options an inexpensive add-on know-how that may take away greater than 99.9% of acidic gases and different emissions. The know-how will also be added to different pure gas-driven tools. Credit score: Jill Hemman/ORNL
Pure fuel furnaces not solely warmth your own home, however additionally they produce numerous air pollution.
Even trendy high-efficiency condensing furnaces produce important quantities of corrosive acidic condensation and unhealthy ranges of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and methane. These emissions are sometimes vented into the environment and find yourself polluting our soil, water, and air.
Now, scientists on the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge Nationwide Laboratory (ORNL) have developed an inexpensive add-on know-how that removes greater than 99.9% of acidic gases and different emissions to provide an ultraclean pure fuel furnace. This acidic fuel discount, or AGR, know-how will also be added to different pure gas-driven tools similar to water heaters, business boilers, and industrial furnaces.
“Simply as catalytic converters assist cut back emissions from billions of automobiles worldwide, the brand new AGR know-how can just about eradicate problematic greenhouse gases and acidic condensation produced by as we speak’s new and present residential fuel furnaces,” mentioned Zhiming Gao, workers researcher with ORNL’s Power Science and Know-how Directorate. “An eco-friendly condensate eliminates the necessity to use corrosion-resistant chrome steel supplies for furnace warmth exchangers, which reduces manufacturing prices.”
To exhibit the effectiveness of acidic fuel discount in a furnace, the researchers fabricated an AGR catalyst, enclosed it in a steel housing and put in the machine on a typical commercially obtainable high-efficiency condensing furnace. Outcomes after a 400-hour reliability and sturdiness check confirmed the AGR nearly fully eliminated dangerous emissions from the flue fuel and produced a nonacidic condensate with a impartial pH degree.
To look at the inner situation and soot distribution of the post-test AGR with out damaging the machine’s fuel flow-through channels, the scientists used neutron computed tomography at ORNL’s Excessive Flux Isotope Reactor, or HFIR. Not like X-rays, neutrons can penetrate the steel housing to report photographs which are then used to provide 2D and 3D representations of the used machine.
“Such insights will allow improved AGR machine designs for a extra uniform and self-cleaning fuel movement sample,” mentioned Gao. “This can even assist alleviate extreme soot accumulation to boost AGR-enabled furnace efficiency.”
Soot particles, which usually kind due to the unfinished combustion of hydrocarbons, include substantial hydrogen. Neutrons are particularly good at detecting and mapping hydrogen and different gentle components.
“Neutron imaging and mapping after the AGR check supplied particulars about how the flue fuel flowed by the AGR, which revealed the heavy accumulation of soot particles in the course of the catalyst,” mentioned ORNL’s Yuxuan Zhang, a neutron instrument scientist at HFIR.
AGR know-how would enable furnace producers to make use of supplies which are extra inexpensive than the stainless steels utilized in most warmth exchangers. This elevated affordability may enable furnace producers to promote extra high-efficiency furnaces that meet California’s proposed new requirements for residential and business furnace emissions.
“Presently, AGR-enabled furnaces would require offline regeneration of the machine about as soon as each three years below regular use circumstances,” Gao mentioned. “The AGR unit could possibly be eliminated by a house owner or technician and carried to a regeneration and recycling location. This could be much like how customers convey their empty pure fuel tanks for his or her outside grills to a supplier to alternate them for full tanks.”
Reference: “Nondestructive neutron imaging prognosis of acidic fuel discount catalyst after 400-Hour operation in pure fuel furnace” by Zhiming Gao, Yuxuan Zhang, Shuo Qian, Weiwei Yang, Zili Wu, Kyle Gluesenkamp, Kashif Nawaz and Anthony Gehl, 2 November 2022, Chemical Engineering Journal.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cej.2022.140099
In 2022, the ORNL AGR know-how acquired a coveted R&D 100 award and was chosen for focused funding by ORNL’s Know-how Innovation Program.
The analysis was sponsored by the DOE Constructing Applied sciences Workplace and used assets at ORNL’s Constructing Applied sciences Analysis and Integration Middle, HFIR and the Middle for Nanophase Supplies Sciences, or CNMS.
