The communication came in the form of a filled up feedback form
from my erstwhile website. It was written in very poor English, which
was all right as the sender was not from an English speaking country,
but the tone was nasty and its insinuations, simply preposterous; that I
had stolen his technology!!
I had never heard of this person, his technology or even seen the website, which he highlighted in his note. I replied back in the best Russian that I could muster( as I don't know Ukrainian) , that Fuel Emulsification wasn’t exactly rocket science, and I needn’t copy anything from him and wished him luck. He was apparently not satisfied and in his updated website goaded about how the Americans stole his technology, the Indians (that’s me) pinched it from the Americans and the Chinese just copied from the Indians. At least we were not at the bottom of the list!!
Last month it was I, who was sending emails to several companies offering Fuel Emulsions related services and technologies, even to former employees of the now defunct ones. But instead of issuing threats, I was pleading for references about their clients, specifically power stations so that I could highlight them at a forthcoming technical presentation with a government company. I didn’t receive a single reply and I suspect it was not due to secrecy but because they had no clients to talk about. As a result I couldn’t provide any examples except Santa Rita in Philippines (now on natural gas), the Planta Arizona unit in Guatemala and an obscure power station in Albania. Anyway the presentation was doomed from the start, as the obnoxious “His Engineer-ness” who headed their team ignored or shot-down everything I said and we would have still been treated like dirt had we brought them all the proof on earth or teleported them to Vlore ( that's the Albanian Station's name).
It just all bottles down to the sad fact, that ever since Venezuela stopped shipping Orimulsion, usage of Emulsified Fuels worldwide, especially HFO has been negligible to the point of being non-existing. Probably the same scenario is with emulsified Diesel as we stopped hearing about Purinox & Aquazole for a decade now.
During a recent Skype conversation with Bill Howe, the former CEO of Quadrise, the man who got both Wartisila and Maersk, not only to conduct trials but also approve their MSAR II Fuel Emulsion, I asked him same question I made to myself a thousand times before “Do you feel Fuel Emulsions have a future?
Bill, who has now moved over to the world of LNG, replied slowly and introspectively, “I don’t know.” Bill probably meant things exactly as he said, but I only heard a "NO" at the end! Later he also mentioned that to the best of his knowledge Maersk has not given up on MSAR II and it was now just the question of working out the how’s and where’s. Well, a "sigh " of relief!!
Also dwelling on the future of Fuel Emulsions, the “Pitbull of LNG - Rudolf Huber” who had himself shortly dabbled with emulsions, in his article “LNG or emulsion fuels – what’s it gonna be?” made a few extremely valid observations. One, that there is “a solid kernel of science behind Emulsion Fuels,” but also that it would always remain a niche segment fuel. He also remarked that any breakthrough announced in the world of Fuel Emulsions should be taken with a generous pinch of salt and that the technology is notoriously difficult to implement in the real world. Rudolf has since returned to his LNG world of gaseous bliss and on my part I can’t help agreeing with everything that he wrote, especially the pinch of salt part.
India's former President and the country’s favorite science icon Late Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam enthusiastically spoke about the advantages of fuel emulsions in several of his speeches till he realized that the person who introduced him to the subject had gone so completely overboard with his tall unsubstantiated claims, that he consequently refused to have anything to do with this field.
After all, when someone spouts absolute drivel like, “.. the MOLECULAR ENGINEERED EMULSIFICATION by the patented ________'s EXCITATION PROCESS and the SYNTHESIZER makes HYDROPHILIC ADHESIONS due to changed VAN DER WALLS forces due to COLD PLASMA CATALYSIS facilitating mixing of several blends easy ensuring stability of the fuel for a longer time,” you can't blame people for regarding this technology as Snake Oil.
Nonetheless, to understand what makes Fuel Emulsions so special and why they are still relevant in today’s world, one has to first understand what its all about, as going by patents filed worldwide, the first attempts in blending fuel and water go back to the 1930s. Thereafter like a Phoenix, the technology kept fading away and resurrecting itself every decade especially when petroleum prices hit the roof.
When industrial fuels like Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) or Refinery residues are emulsified, the process inserts microscopic water droplets into the oil phase or vise versa. During combustion, these water droplets explode into steam in a continuous series of micro-explosions in a process called Secondary Atomization, ripping apart the oil droplets into a nano-sized mist that burn-out completely releasing slightly more thermal energy and far lesser pollutants like particulate matter, NOx and CO.
Well, that was the good part, but as Rudolf said, in the real world things are far more complicated and I would say the correct word is “ugly.”
First, there is the mountainous effort of surmounting the prejudices related to mixing oil and water. Secondly, in order to avail the promised fuel savings of HFO Emulsions, it is crucial to readjust the Burners for least excess amount of air, in fact far lower levels than with stock fuel. Which is easier said than done, at least in the Indian SME sector, where we have come across Boilers running with 30% and Furnaces having over 150% excess air. Furthermore, the people manning them are usually poorly educated if at all, who mostly learned their skills on the job and have uncompromising egos and convictions as how things are to be done and adjusted. Let also not forget that virtually none of these plants have a fuel flow meter, and it is always the person handling the burner and the dipstick who has the last word about fuel consumption. So in the best of cases the fuel economy remains unchanged but usually the complaint is that it goes steeply downhill. I shall leave out the part about fuel adulteration and pay-offs as I had written about it in an earlier post.
In the case of HFO engines used in ships and for captive power generation Emulsified Fuels could play a far-reaching positive role in providing better economy, reducing maintenance and emissions, but here too there are numerous obstacles to overcome. Predictably most of the owners don’t want to experiment with new fuels without the manufacturer’s consent, who on their part despite claiming in brochures that their engines are emulsion-ready, rarely address any queries on this subject. And even when a trial is agreed upon, there are still plenty of other unforeseen technical issues like for example, how to bypass the moisture transducer of modern Centrifugal Separators such as Alfa Laval’s S – Models, where it acts like an electronic gatekeeper to stop any moisture containing fuel from reaching the engines.
Lastly, with the current low oil prices, there is hardly any incentive for most bulk fuel consumers to walk the extra mile for adopting a new technology and work procedures that would at best provide them with a 5% improvement in fuel economy, that too one as controversial as mixing Oil and Water.
Unless!! Unless they are in a fix and with no other viable solution in sight, and the only industry in such a quagmire that I can think of today, is India’s Power Sector. With over 8000MW of generating capacity either standing idle or working intermittently, these are Gas Turbine based combined cycle plants that had been built atop promises of cheap and copious soon-to-be-available domestic Natural Gas. However, the forecast soon turned out to be a gas bubble by itself as both the private and government Gas companies failed to deliver. Meanwhile running these plants on imported Gas or Naphtha is just to expensive for economical power generation.
So the only way to get these Power Stations up and running would entail one of the following ways:
On the benefit front, the Power Stations would be running on the cheapest liquid fuel available, cheaper than Naptha, cheaper than Natural Gas and being Emulsified it would negate most of the problems of Sooting and Fouling associated with using HFO in Gas Turbines. And unlike the elusive Natural Gas, Indian refineries produce over 15 million MT of HFO per year and the cournty consumes only a 3rd of it, the rest is sold overseas at a discount.
Ravi Deka is an energy management consultant and one of the pioneers in introducing Fuel Emulsification concepts in the country.
www.rade.co.in
www.creatnettechnology.com
I had never heard of this person, his technology or even seen the website, which he highlighted in his note. I replied back in the best Russian that I could muster( as I don't know Ukrainian) , that Fuel Emulsification wasn’t exactly rocket science, and I needn’t copy anything from him and wished him luck. He was apparently not satisfied and in his updated website goaded about how the Americans stole his technology, the Indians (that’s me) pinched it from the Americans and the Chinese just copied from the Indians. At least we were not at the bottom of the list!!
Last month it was I, who was sending emails to several companies offering Fuel Emulsions related services and technologies, even to former employees of the now defunct ones. But instead of issuing threats, I was pleading for references about their clients, specifically power stations so that I could highlight them at a forthcoming technical presentation with a government company. I didn’t receive a single reply and I suspect it was not due to secrecy but because they had no clients to talk about. As a result I couldn’t provide any examples except Santa Rita in Philippines (now on natural gas), the Planta Arizona unit in Guatemala and an obscure power station in Albania. Anyway the presentation was doomed from the start, as the obnoxious “His Engineer-ness” who headed their team ignored or shot-down everything I said and we would have still been treated like dirt had we brought them all the proof on earth or teleported them to Vlore ( that's the Albanian Station's name).
It just all bottles down to the sad fact, that ever since Venezuela stopped shipping Orimulsion, usage of Emulsified Fuels worldwide, especially HFO has been negligible to the point of being non-existing. Probably the same scenario is with emulsified Diesel as we stopped hearing about Purinox & Aquazole for a decade now.
During a recent Skype conversation with Bill Howe, the former CEO of Quadrise, the man who got both Wartisila and Maersk, not only to conduct trials but also approve their MSAR II Fuel Emulsion, I asked him same question I made to myself a thousand times before “Do you feel Fuel Emulsions have a future?
Bill, who has now moved over to the world of LNG, replied slowly and introspectively, “I don’t know.” Bill probably meant things exactly as he said, but I only heard a "NO" at the end! Later he also mentioned that to the best of his knowledge Maersk has not given up on MSAR II and it was now just the question of working out the how’s and where’s. Well, a "sigh " of relief!!
Also dwelling on the future of Fuel Emulsions, the “Pitbull of LNG - Rudolf Huber” who had himself shortly dabbled with emulsions, in his article “LNG or emulsion fuels – what’s it gonna be?” made a few extremely valid observations. One, that there is “a solid kernel of science behind Emulsion Fuels,” but also that it would always remain a niche segment fuel. He also remarked that any breakthrough announced in the world of Fuel Emulsions should be taken with a generous pinch of salt and that the technology is notoriously difficult to implement in the real world. Rudolf has since returned to his LNG world of gaseous bliss and on my part I can’t help agreeing with everything that he wrote, especially the pinch of salt part.
India's former President and the country’s favorite science icon Late Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam enthusiastically spoke about the advantages of fuel emulsions in several of his speeches till he realized that the person who introduced him to the subject had gone so completely overboard with his tall unsubstantiated claims, that he consequently refused to have anything to do with this field.
After all, when someone spouts absolute drivel like, “.. the MOLECULAR ENGINEERED EMULSIFICATION by the patented ________'s EXCITATION PROCESS and the SYNTHESIZER makes HYDROPHILIC ADHESIONS due to changed VAN DER WALLS forces due to COLD PLASMA CATALYSIS facilitating mixing of several blends easy ensuring stability of the fuel for a longer time,” you can't blame people for regarding this technology as Snake Oil.
Nonetheless, to understand what makes Fuel Emulsions so special and why they are still relevant in today’s world, one has to first understand what its all about, as going by patents filed worldwide, the first attempts in blending fuel and water go back to the 1930s. Thereafter like a Phoenix, the technology kept fading away and resurrecting itself every decade especially when petroleum prices hit the roof.
When industrial fuels like Heavy Fuel Oil (HFO) or Refinery residues are emulsified, the process inserts microscopic water droplets into the oil phase or vise versa. During combustion, these water droplets explode into steam in a continuous series of micro-explosions in a process called Secondary Atomization, ripping apart the oil droplets into a nano-sized mist that burn-out completely releasing slightly more thermal energy and far lesser pollutants like particulate matter, NOx and CO.
Well, that was the good part, but as Rudolf said, in the real world things are far more complicated and I would say the correct word is “ugly.”
First, there is the mountainous effort of surmounting the prejudices related to mixing oil and water. Secondly, in order to avail the promised fuel savings of HFO Emulsions, it is crucial to readjust the Burners for least excess amount of air, in fact far lower levels than with stock fuel. Which is easier said than done, at least in the Indian SME sector, where we have come across Boilers running with 30% and Furnaces having over 150% excess air. Furthermore, the people manning them are usually poorly educated if at all, who mostly learned their skills on the job and have uncompromising egos and convictions as how things are to be done and adjusted. Let also not forget that virtually none of these plants have a fuel flow meter, and it is always the person handling the burner and the dipstick who has the last word about fuel consumption. So in the best of cases the fuel economy remains unchanged but usually the complaint is that it goes steeply downhill. I shall leave out the part about fuel adulteration and pay-offs as I had written about it in an earlier post.
In the case of HFO engines used in ships and for captive power generation Emulsified Fuels could play a far-reaching positive role in providing better economy, reducing maintenance and emissions, but here too there are numerous obstacles to overcome. Predictably most of the owners don’t want to experiment with new fuels without the manufacturer’s consent, who on their part despite claiming in brochures that their engines are emulsion-ready, rarely address any queries on this subject. And even when a trial is agreed upon, there are still plenty of other unforeseen technical issues like for example, how to bypass the moisture transducer of modern Centrifugal Separators such as Alfa Laval’s S – Models, where it acts like an electronic gatekeeper to stop any moisture containing fuel from reaching the engines.
Lastly, with the current low oil prices, there is hardly any incentive for most bulk fuel consumers to walk the extra mile for adopting a new technology and work procedures that would at best provide them with a 5% improvement in fuel economy, that too one as controversial as mixing Oil and Water.
Unless!! Unless they are in a fix and with no other viable solution in sight, and the only industry in such a quagmire that I can think of today, is India’s Power Sector. With over 8000MW of generating capacity either standing idle or working intermittently, these are Gas Turbine based combined cycle plants that had been built atop promises of cheap and copious soon-to-be-available domestic Natural Gas. However, the forecast soon turned out to be a gas bubble by itself as both the private and government Gas companies failed to deliver. Meanwhile running these plants on imported Gas or Naphtha is just to expensive for economical power generation.
So the only way to get these Power Stations up and running would entail one of the following ways:
- The government starts giving the power companies’ hefty subsidies on imported gas price, which is what they are lobbying for but what would cost heavily to the public exchequer.
- The power stations set up Syn-gas plants to make gas from coal or coke, which is not likely considering that most are not even able to service their bank loans.
- Some of these Gas Turbines can be made to switch over to HFO
Emulsions, which is not such a far-fetched or improbable idea
considering that most legacy and multi-fuel turbines such as GE’s B
& E class, Siemens' SGT 500 series or Ansaldo’s AE94.2 &
AE64.3A+ models can easily burn residual fuels. Some of them actually
use steam injection to reduce NOx and for flame augmentation, others use
water injection to cool and condense the charge.
On the benefit front, the Power Stations would be running on the cheapest liquid fuel available, cheaper than Naptha, cheaper than Natural Gas and being Emulsified it would negate most of the problems of Sooting and Fouling associated with using HFO in Gas Turbines. And unlike the elusive Natural Gas, Indian refineries produce over 15 million MT of HFO per year and the cournty consumes only a 3rd of it, the rest is sold overseas at a discount.
Ravi Deka is an energy management consultant and one of the pioneers in introducing Fuel Emulsification concepts in the country.
www.rade.co.in
www.creatnettechnology.com
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