Special gases

In addition to the standard fuel natural gas, there is a whole series of special gases that are often flared off or combusted with the aid of a support fuel. Typical gases in this group include landfill gas, sewer gas, refinery gas, coal mine gas, vent gases and coke gas. They can all be utilized thermally with no problem, but they do place increased demands on the firing system.

In contrast to lean gas, these gases have an appreciable energy content at more than 15 MJ/m³, making utilization easy to implement. However, they are available in fluctuating quantities or with fluctuating heat values. A good example are vent gases from fuel storage plants. The tank contents consist of volatile, highly flammable hydrocarbons. Because of this, the tanks must be rendered inert with nitrogen during refueling. Therefore the volume and amount of gas fluctuate during loading and unloading and the composition of the gas also fluctuates between pure fuel gas and pure nitrogen.

While the combustible ingredients of refinery gas consist of hydrogen to butane, methane is the main ingredient of landfill gas, sewer gas and coal mine gas. They also contain appreciable portions of carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

All the gases listed here require a heat value measurement in the gas valve train to record the actual, current heat value and transfer it to the burner control unit. In this way the burner will then receive the correct amount of air or additional natural gas as well to combust the special gas cleanly and with priority. If necessary, by-products that accumulate in the process can also be used at this point, for example residual oils from refinery operation can be combusted in parallel.

SAACKE offers two solutions for economical utilization of special gases: The TF-DDZG steam pressure atomizer series and the SSB-LCG swirl burner series. Their proven technology reliably utilizes even difficult gases with very low pump pressure, for a positive effect on both the budget and the environment.