New Ultra-Low Emissions Combustion Technology Developed
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 08. 2.07
It sounds almost too good to be true: just drop the device — dubbed the low-swirl injector (LSI) — into any old gas-burning turbine and watch it achieve low emissions of carbon dioxide and near-zero emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx). Yet this revolutionary combustion technology — developed jointly by a team of scientists from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab and one from San Diego-based Solar Turbines Inc. — did just that in a recent test using pure hydrogen as a fuel. If incorporated into existing power plants, it could help eliminate thousands of tons of NOx and millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year.
The LSI works by imparting a slight spin to the gaseous fuel and air mixture placed in the gas turbine, causing it to spread out. This helps stabilize the flame used to heat the mixture and, more importantly, allows it to burn at lower temperatures. Since the production of NOx is highly temperature-dependent, the lower flame temperature drastically reduces the level of emissions produced. Natural gas-burning turbines equipped with the LSI emitted 2 ppm of NOx, more than 5 times less the amount emitted by conventional burners.
It can also burn a variety of other fuels — including hydrogen — and can easily be fitted into existing gas turbine models without any major redesigns. Further research is being conducted to make carbon-neutral renewable fuels — such as those from landfills and waste treatments — also compatible with the technology.
“The LSI principle defies conventional approaches. Combustion experts worldwide are just beginning to embrace this counter-intuitive idea. Principles from turbulent fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and flame chemistry are all required to explain the science underlying this combustion phenomenon,” said Robert Cheng of the DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the device's inventors.
The DOE has high hopes for the LSI: it is now actively testing it for its ability to burn syngas — a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide — and hydrogen fuels to see whether it could be incorporated into the world's first near-zero emissions coal power plant, FutureGen. The LSI is one among several combustion technologies being evaluated for use in the plant's 200+ MW utility-size hydrogen turbine.
Via ::ScienceDaily: Ultraclean Combustion Technology Developed For Electricity Generation (news website)
See also: ::New Device Burns Fuel With Almost Zero Emissions, ::The Quasiturbine: Promising To Revolutionize Engines, ::Scuderi Air-Hybrid Engine
NOx reduction I could see, but reducing CO2? How? That's a very straightforward byproduct of combustion.
I don't think the post discusses CO2. It's a great idea to cut NOx as well, of course. As fuel continues to rise in price, I'm sure there will be more and more investment into squeezing every penny out of the combustible, so we'll get a lot of studies of combustion and exhaust modeling, and fuel refining, which may lead to sequestration possiblities.
The article says low CO2 production and then goes on to say, "using pure hydrogen as fuel."
Of course there was low CO2 production - the reaction didn't involve burning a carbon source!
2 H2 + O2 -> 2 H2O
No carbon in equals no carbon oxides (CO2 or CO) out.
Sorry for the offside post, but check this out...Treehugger's been bought!
http://thebrowser.blogs.fortune.com/2007/08/01/discovery-buys-treehuggercom/
Interesting... (hmm, no mention of it on the Front page, thus far...)
The syngas thing is very cool. It could be used instead of a catalytic carbon monoxide converter on hybrids, and it would probably be greener than the platnum in the devices. Plus, it gives an energy boost. A small amount of hydrogen is nothing big when being used in this situation, so it's a lot more practical than a fuel cell vehicle.
I just read my post. I should have explained myself better. The energy from combusting the carbon monoxide could help charge the battery, and the car could still run on gasoline, which is cheap and widely available, but also take a fill-up of hydrogen for added efficiency and less use of the built-in catalytic converter legally required, which usually makes performance and effeciency fall, but is very important for clean emissions. I'm sure there's a ton of engineering problems with filtering out the carbon monoxide from the regular exhaust for specifically combusting with the hydrogen, and getting the ratio right, but it is fun to dream in the meantime.
I'm new here--here is my thoughts and suggestion--forget about hydrogen use as a fuel.It's a scum The energy needed to get it is very great. Electric is generated from oil,gas, nuke..I suggest starting out at home first--extracting heat from home waste water,Replacing old refrigerators and front loading wash machines, hanging cloths to dry.
Here is something that no-one has thought of--Refrigerator heating cools be routed outside. That heat inside the house-makes the air conditioner work twice as hard. By the way--why are chest freezers kept inside-- or 2nd refrigerators--boot the suckers out in the garage. Reason given by manufactures of these energy eaters is--oil might freeze in compressor-- I say -B.S.Here in Toronto--For over 20 years outside--and my electric bills are half. The biggest scam--Belerd cells---$billions given--what a waste.Start at home you fools ! :)
Over Matt: TreeHugger did mention the purchase. They actually joked that they bought Discovery. I don't have the link but one or two articles on the site mentioned it. Just scroll through some of the recentl archives and you'll see it.
The article is confusing, but what I think that they are saying is that the technology can burn many different fuels, not just one fuel. They proved this using hydrogen as a fuel.
I read the article on the LBL web site at http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/EETD-LSI.html
and found this article still confusing, but it states that there is a side project that is being built that uses hydrogen as a fuel. It also talks about burning waste gas from landfills and other similar fuel sources like natural gas.
To me, what it sounds like they have done is used hydrogen to prove that the technology is capable of burning other fuels.
Yes, burning hydrogen will not produce CO2, however, when using other fuels such as natural gas (the article states that the technology is capable of doing that), the technology does reduce CO2 and other undesirable components such as NOX according to what I gleaned from the article.
Who ever wrote the release did not do a good job explaining things, IMHO.
From a chemical engineers perspective... reducing the temperature will reduce reaction rate and thus production... that is not a very good solution as most companies will definitely not want to reduce production.