Investigation of Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil as fuel
HVO passes first test procedures
Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) is partially admixed to diesel fuel nowadays. The Institute for Energy Process Technology and Chemical Engineering (IEC) of the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg and the OWI Oel-Waerme-Institute GmbH investigated within a joint research project, whether HVO represents a complement to the offer of conventional and biogenic fuels in the heating market. They concluded that from a technical point of view HVO is in principle suitable as an admixture to fuels such as low-sulfur heating oil for oil heating.
The mixing of different percentages of HVO with low-sulfur heating oil is possible without any problems. The mixture features cold properties sufficient for the domestic heating market. Within combustion tests in commercial oil condensing boilers over a period of 500 hours with selected fuel mixtures, the effects on the heater’s technology and emissions were quite small. The heat exchanger’s surface kept free of deposits and soot residues, so that a constantly high and steady efficiency of heating systems can be expected when using HVO. Comparable reference experiments with pure low-sulfur heating oil indicated that both fuels show similarly good combustion properties and that no modification in existing systems is required. Nevertheless, long-term combustion tests showed a starting deposit formation at the nozzle´s sinter filter in two mixtures for heating oil with 50 % and 10 % HVO (isomerized). It is therefore recommended to carry out further combustion-technical investigations on the usability of heating systems. Within long-term storage over a period of eight months, which was performed simultaneously, no deposits aroused, so that a similarly good storage stability for fuels containing HVO could be noticed.
Within examinations of the IEC regarding the manufacturing process, a process simulation model was developed to investigate not only the sole hydration of vegetable oil in so-called “stand-alone”- systems but also the common hydration of vegetable oil and of the heating oil-diesel-fraction in conventional refinery processes (Co-Processing). Moreover, new, sulfur-free catalysts were developed and tested, especially for the stand-alone process. Catalysts containing precious metals as well as with copper modified nickel-molybdenum-catalysts turned out to be particularly well suited, although their ageing behavior could not be satisfactorily optimized within the research project.
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