New petcoke combustion chamber
Beralmar come up with a solution for the use of petcoke in hot air generation for dryers.
The new CCP combustion chamber is currently available with a power of up to 3 mill. Kcal/h. It has been designed to overcome the difficulties of petcoke combustion in a closed chamber. Owing to the corrosive characteristics of petcoke and its sulphur content, the combustion fumes must be passed through a heat exchanger coupled to the CCP chamber to enable their use in a dryer for ceramic products, so that the hot air received by the dryer is clean. Therefore, the set consisting of the CCP combustion chamber and the heat exchanger provides a high-quality and cost-effective solution since petcoke, despite its price fluctuations over time, is always significantly cheaper than other fuels such as natural gas or fuel-oil.
In some markets, this solution needs to be accompanied by a particle filter installed in the stack of the heat exchanger to comply with emissions regulations. Beralmar also offers this accessory.
Beralmar had in fact already carried out successful projects with this type of petcoke chamber for some ceramics plants in Spain back in the 1970s and 1980s, so this year’s new CCP chamber was not designed from scratch. In the 1980s, natural gas reached practically every Spanish ceramics plants at a very competitive price, resulting in petcoke chambers falling into disuse. Now that petcoke is again an economically viable solution in many markets after the increase in fuel-oil and natural gas prices, Beralmar is offering this technology once again with a series of improvements. This, added to the quality of the petcoke currently available on the market, makes the new CCP a reliable long-term solution to keep the thermal costs of the drying process down.
It should be noted that due to the high temperature required by petcoke for combustion, the CCP chamber needs to be preheated using a fuel-oil or gas burner. Once the working temperature is reached, the chamber starts to operate 100% with micronized petcoke.
This new solution has already been applied successfully.
Beralmar Tecnologic, S.A.
www.beralmar.com
