Green Hydrogen

High Performance to Meet Your Specifications

Green hydrogen is formed purely from electrolysis, where water is “split” into its component molecules, isolating the hydrogen and leaving only O2 as a byproduct. Given its simplistic production and indefinite sustainability, green hydrogen has proven to be 3 times as powerful as current fossil fuels and used most commonly in large scale production or manufacturing applications which would normally be high carbon expenders. However, hydrogen usage is finding its way into other, smaller scale applications to meet sustainability targets and receive financial incentives. Key features include: 

  • Can produce up to 3 times as much energy as fossil fuels 
  • Renewable
  • Little to no carbon emissions
  • Overview and Features
Overview and Features

Because of its instability, green Hydrogen is “blended” with natural gas and used as fuel, usually in large industrial applications that have excess Hydrogen on hand or are making a targeted move toward lowering of emissions and meeting environmental regulations. The blending process is delicate and yet is essential in keeping steady combustion and avoiding expensive outages.

Many end-users are considering switching to hydrogen firing for their steam generation needs; therefore, it is essential to highlight some of the challenges they would be facing when planning to make the fuel conversion or addition. Most end-users have their boiler/burners plant systems suited for natural gas firing; if we compare the natural gas and hydrogen combustion characteristics, the hydrogen firing speed is significantly higher (~5 times) than natural gas. This requires the burner and gas nozzles to be designed for the new fuel velocity. Hydrogen has a higher stoichiometric adiabatic flame temperature (~450 F degrees higher) than natural gas, making necessary the upgrade of internal burner components to higher grade steel or alloys suited for the elevated temperatures.

Emissions play another curveball into the firing of hydrogen, as hydrogen burns “hotter” than natural gas and have a faster combustion rate than natural gas; hydrogen is prone to thermal NOx generation. Considering few techniques to lower the NOx, such as flue gas recirculation (FGR), steam injection, and Ultra-low NOx burners can effectively reduce the emissions to the required levels.

Our Preferred Special Combustion Engineering (PSCE) division has considered all the above. It has developed and installed our Hydrogen burner system on multiple sites successfully, keeping the end-user boiler systems operating safely and environmentally sound.

See also: Automatic, Variable Ratio, Firing of a Blend of “Free” and Purchased Fuels

Preferred’s Solution

Our Hydrogen burner, developed by Preferred’s Special Combustion Engineering (PSCE) division, provides the sustainable, safe reclamation of waste hydrogen with high efficiency and carbon footprint reduction. Chemical plant applications are able to use their green, blue, gray, or white Hydrogen, which significantly reduces their use of fossil fuel for their process steam requirements.

Our expertise in coal to natural gas conversions and other alternate “free fuel” applications comes with a commitment to reliable blending of alternate and traditional fuels and reliable combustion, so the plant is operational, and experiences limited down time.

PSCE handles controls, burner, boiler, fuel handling, blending, and a balance of plant integrated combustion. Specializing in these applications gives plant managers the confidence that their burner will light when they need it to, no matter the fuel blend they are achieving for combustion. 

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