waste lubricating oil as boiler fuel

[pamungkas]

dear all,
Our power station want to decrease the cost of oil waste handling. They are intender to change the waste lubricating oil as boiler fuel. Is it possible? The boiler is designed as fired coal.

I am electrical engineer, and I am not familiar with fuel-mechanincal-environmetn issue. I appreciate your helps.

Thank.

 

[metengr]

What size and type (wall fired burners, cyclone-fired or other type) of boiler do you have at your Station? Burning waste lube oil as support fuel versus primary fuel could be done.

However, you need to consider the location of oil guns, possible atomization of oil to improve combustion, and most important what the effects would be on boiler fouling and flue gas emissions.

 

[DougMSOE]

We burn our waste oil in our cyclone boilers by dumping it into the bunker, works just fine.

 

[pamungkas]

Metengr,
The boiler type is wall fired burners. I think it should have atomization device for better combution and you are right it must be difficult to find the proper location for it. I can't describe what cyclone boiler is, I don't know whether it work fine as in cyclone boiler just like Doug said. What about the dirt of the waste oil? Could you inform me about the parameters, what kind of filtered waste oil could pass to the burner? Do we need additive, in purpose of the waste oil could be burned easily?

I will have study comparison to the another power plant, could you inform me what aspects should I observe so we can get the best conclusion?

Thanks

 

[metengr]

If you have wall burners, I would suspect that you have mills to pulverize the coal. I would not recommend throwing waste oil in your coal bunkers because this could clog up your bunkers, create a serious fire hazard and create a mess.

How much waste oil do your generate? If it is a small amount, I would just have it removed. You could do a cost/benefit analysis where you factor in the cost of adding a waste oil storage tank, filter, oil pump for delivery of waste oil to your oil guns and piping, and compare the benefit of fuel savings. I would bet it would be cheaper to have the waste oil sent off site.

 

[EnergyLogic]

Depending upon the volume of used oil you're looking to use and the boiler requirements, you may want to consider looking at used oil boilers that are designed specifically for waste oil. We are one manufacturer,

http://www.energylogic.com,

however there are others I suggest you research on the web.

 

[pamungkas]

Thanks all for the comment and sorry for being late respond your help. I have a visitation to company which have used oil as "fuel". Actually they use furnace as "incenerator" for the used oil. They limit 5% of total energy into furnace. The permissive to spray the atomization of used oil is temperature of the furnace 1000 deg with assumption in 1 second a perfect combustion of used oil is happened.

They use pulverized coal as main fuel and we use raw material/un-pulveized. The furnace design of ours is wall tube furnace with mechanical thrower type feeder. It seems we should have a lot of modification to have used oil as "fuel".

Thanks.

 

[lat3724]

Sir - You are already likely using fuel oil at your workplace. Fuel oil, or sometimes #6 (bunker oil) is used to fire all coal-fired powerhouses. The oil is used to pre-warm the tubes and allow them to stretch and grow prior to feeding the coal to the cyclones. Your oil, which is most likely from the turbine, ID fans or other critical equipment is probably very filtered too. Since your waste oil would be insignificant in comparison to the volume of oil used to fire the boiler, just dump the waste oil in with the starting fuel.

You do not need any special equipment. A power generating unit will actually burn thousands of gallons of oil upon start-up. You need fuel oil to fire the boiler - you have oil to get rid of, so just dump it in with the fuel oil.