Understanding fuel sources begins to push us into some basic chemistry and what is done to improve a fuel source to increase its potential, purify it and then determine how to use that fuel.
Carbon Analytic's fuel design is unique as multiple naturally produced hydrogen and carbon rich materials from plant based sources combined with first-use waste normally filling up land fills. BOTH are comprised of mostly hydrogen, carbon and alcohols. We refine these materials to purify them and include other common amendments which work to aid the refinement further during the actual combustion process later on.
Our refinement and amendment process is what gives our solid fuel source its unique properties. The fuel is able to perform within our combustion systems designed to make use of those refinements in a way never before done. The result slightly resembles wood pellets except that both our shape and consistency of size are the first notable difference. The differences in composition and how the fuel burns is what really sets our product apart from other forms of solid fuels, like wood pellets, or coal by comparison. This gives us greater control over the energy per gram, combustion behavior and combustion emissions.
Nearly all forms of combustion fuels rely on hydrogen and carbon (complex hydrocarbons) to produce energy for thermal expansion. This even includes rocket engine propellants in most cases, which is the high density benefit we gained from fossil fuels...
Some examples:
Internal Combustion Engines: otherwise referred to as ICE designs require a liquid fuel to be introduced to a cylinder where a piston will compress the fuel before ignition takes place causing violent combustion and expansion of the gasses to force the piston in the other direction. The octane of the fuel, it's mixture with fresh air intake and the compression ratio determine the power produced during each ignition event as the engine continues to operate.
To achieve maximum power the engine is required to use more fuel than it can combust, creating emissions of un-burnt fuel. Otherwise the engine would run lean, hot and damage itself. In a lean condition the engine produces less power per stroke which at best offers only about 30% efficiency still today.
The current trend is to move away from ICE designs in favor of electric vehicles. The problem there is the demand of energy to recharge the vehicle among wind and solar being intermittent sources at best.
Flotation bed gasifier power generation is another important form of combustion which has been among the earliest of internal combustion. However in this case the internals are inside a chamber to create heat for producing steam to power a huge turbine for spinning an electrical generator.
Coal fired turbine generation has been problematic for many years in terms of soot production, Co2, sulfur and No(x) emissions. It became increasingly costly for power companies forced to adapt scrubber systems by government influence.
These systems began by crushing coal into a dust and blowing it into the reactor where it would combust the fine particles very quickly. Wood pellets were then added to the design, also first crushed and blown into the gasifier. Last, the ability to force natural gas into the gasifier has lead to designs which may be a combination of all, or strictly run on natural gas alone.
Here again as with the others, more fuel is burnt than is used in order to produce the most power. This leads to the need to recirculate unburnt exhaust and particles back into the combustion zone. Any remaining ash or Co2 has to be scrubbed in the final exhaust, adding another problematic step to full time operation and cost. Where natural gas is concerned, un-burnt natural gas, (methane) which escapes the reactor to atmosphere adds to greenhouse effect 80 times more potent with regard to the trapped heat being reflected back to the earth.
Gas fired turbine combustion, including Hydrogen is the last fuel source / method we examine for energy production. This system uses closed loop steam at high pressure from a boiler to spin the turbine. The boiler is heated by gasifier as explained above.
Recently the UK has worked on a design that can use compressed hydrogen and oxygen in storage vessels to drive a combustion chamber of a turbine similar to a commercial air liner jet engine.
In this instance there are no negative emissions except for steam resulting from combustion under pressure. The down side is that hydrogen still remains costly to isolate, compress and store / deliver as well as the risk of the fuel source under very high pressures, 5000-10000 psi.
Hydrogen as a fuel source should not be taken lightly as advancements continue in finding ways to offset the cost using renewable energy methods.
To date hydrogen remains VERY expensive from a need to employ huge, low efficiency solar or wind intermittent designs along with huge battery storage methods as an effort to make hydrogen. In the end the supposed "green" solutions, intermittent as they are, continue to threaten total cost putting them outside of practical reach. Deception and marketing aside, wind and solar are neither renewable, sustainable or without further waste streams they create in their long term use we have yet to experience. The intermittent result has been many instances of these "green" methods giving rise to the re-emergence of increased fossil fuel dependency or worse, nuclear energy which is only 5% efficient with toxic waste streams lasting 10 to 100 thousand years sustained risk for loss of containment.
When we add up the environmental and unsustainable nature of our current choices, it was clear for us from the beginning, there had to be another way. Power from combustion still remains the most valuable and reliable asset we have, but for finding the path to renewable and sustainable without emissions side effect threatening our future. Carbon Analytic is leading that path.
