79-07-B4
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Fluid Flame Burner[edit]
Transcript[edit]Some time ago I did a couple of commentaries about Morbark Industries in the Midwest and how they were converting wastewood from our forests into useful energy. I've recently learned of another development in the west which illustrates the ongoing miracle of our free market system. A company called Energy, Incorporated has gone forward with what can only be termed a new industry born of the fuel shortage. It utilizes as a substitute for oil and gas materials heretofore considered waste. As of now Energy, Incorporated through a subsidiary, Energy Products of Idaho has installed 25 commercial units described as fluidized-bed combustion systems. Most of these are in connection with the forest products industry, but one in California generates steam power from olive pits. Let me take one of these installations and try to describe it in layman's language. Actually I find the process as fascinating as science fiction, yet it's as practical as the safety pin. Energy Products of Idaho, in connection with the Boise Cascade Corporation's Emmett, Idaho Plywood plant, has installed an energy system that saves probably one million dollars plus annually in natural gas costs. The substitute fuel is the green bark peeled from logs that become plywood. Reduced to chips about three inches in size, the bark travels through a blowpipe some 650 feet into a storage silo from which it is fed into a combustion/boiler instation called a fluid bed burner. Here is where it becomes science fiction to me. The burner bed is a 12-inch layer of sand preheated to a temperature of 700 degrees by propane gas. At that temperature the waste bark chips are fed into the burner where they are ignited by the sand which has begun to unlock, boil and mix. It never reaches a liquid state but gives such an appearance. The gas has been turned off when the wood ignites and the operating temperature reaches 1600 degrees. Incidentally, the burner has been shut down for as long as 26 hours and the sand returns enough heat to ignite the back without having to be to be reheated by propane. In this plywood plant the heated gas from the burning bark performs two functions: it heats the boiler, creating power to run the plant and it serves to dry the plywood too. In this latter function this substitute gas actually dries the plywood in a shorter time and with an improved quality over that obtained when natural gas was used. The bark that is burned is waste. Boise Cascade still processes the better quality bark and sells it as soil conditioner, mulch and horticultural decoration. What is significant in this new system is that the fuel can be moist, in fact the bark has 60 percent moisture content. This indicates that even the waste we cart to the city dump is potential fuel for the fluid burner of Energy Incorporated. As I said, in California a similar plant is burning olive pits. What's next--and where? This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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