Your choices so far:
1 Fuel: liquid; 2 Process heat
| What is your resource? | What do you want to deliver? | What is the service the customer wants? |
| Biomass (digestible sludge) | District cooling | Comfortable indoor climate |
| Biomass (fermentable sludge) | District heating | Electricity |
| Biomass (solid) | Electricity | Process cooling (< 0 °C) |
| Geothermal | Fuel: Gaseous | 2 Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C) |
| Sunshine | 1 Fuel: Liquid | 2 Process heat (150 - 1000 °C) |
| Water | Fuel: Solid | 2 Process heat (> 1000 °C) |
| Wind | Local cooling (ind. house) | Transport |
| Residual oils/fats etc | Local heating (ind. house) |
Temperatures ranging from 150 to some 1000 °C are common in many types of industries like asphalt works, metal manufacturing and heat treatment, metal casting, glazing of ceramics end numerous others. CHP-plants and hot water boilers for the production of district heating, district cooling and electricity also fall into this category.
For temperatures exceeding 1000 °C, such as glass melting, steel reheating for rolling, the burning of ceramics like building brick or cement, fossil fuel firing and electricity are today's major sources of energy supply.
To judge the potential usability of a fuel for a high-temperature process it must be remembered that the heating value of the fuel is not enough. The most crucial parameter is instead the theoretical flame temperature. Ethanol has a relatively low heating value (28.9 MJ/kg) and also a low density (790 kg/m3), so the energy content per volume is low. However, it will still have a theoretical flame temperature above 1800 °C. Also for FAME ar the flame temperatures full sufficient for the process needs. Both fuels can well be used to produce temperatures in the range of 1500 °C.
The problems associated with a change of fuel for process heating are thus not so much the temperatures attainable but other aspects:
- Using pure ethanol in a process flame furnace will call for a burner designed for ethanol. Such burners are not (yet) readily available on the open market, but any of the major burner manufacturers would be able to design and supply such a burner.
- For both fuels it is likely that plastic and/or rubber tubes and packing's throughout the fuel supply system will have to be replaced prior to the change of fuel.