Conservation and greenhouse gas benefits of an electricity producing condensing furnace
A December, 1997 International Conference on Climate Change in Kyoto, Japan defined the need and developed recommendations to decrease emissions of greenhouse gases to 20% below 1990 levels by 2005. Suggested methods include switching from coal to natural gas and more use of nuclear, solar and wind for electricity production. President Clinton followed on January 31, 1998 by announcing a $6.3 billion plan for the US to fight global warming comprised of tax breaks for more energy efficient cars and buildings and more spending on research to further reduce heat trapping emissions. The purpose of this paper is to present a better and more cost effective method. The proposed Electricity Producing Condensing Furnace (EPCF) is a technology that will produce a substantial decrease in CO{sup 2} which is the primary greenhouse gas while providing the additional benefits of decreased fuel consumption and also stimulating the development of a major new manufacturing and service industry. The EPCF is a simple system with large potential benefits that result from combining the fuel saving principle of cogeneration with the fuel saving principle of a condensing furnace. It was conceived and designed by the author to be a cost effective replacement for a gas hot air furnace. It consists of a single cylinder air cooled engine connected to an induction motor/generator and space heat recovery from both the engine and heat exchangers between the circulating space air and the engine exhaust stream. 20% of the input energy in the fuel is converted to grid connected electricity and virtually all of the remaining is recovered as space heat. Recognizing that electricity is a highly refined form of orderly energy that is about four times more valuable than space heat which is a low quality form of disorderly energy, the effective fuel efficiency of this fundamentally simple system is about 160%. This efficiency is relative to a 100% heating system that produces no work or electricity but does convert all of the fuel energy into space heat such as an unvented and unhealthy kerosene or gas heater. The author submits the EPCF should define a new efficiency standard for natural gas fueled heating. If all existing furnaces were converted to the EPCF the benefits in terms of decreased production of CO{sub 2} and decreased fuel consumption would be an order of magnitude larger and the costs would be orders of magnitude lower than any of the other proposed greenhouse gas techniques such as solar, wind, fuel cells and additional nuclear power. This paper will describe the principle, design, operation and acceptance challenges that must be overcome for the Electricity Producing Condensing Furnace to become the new standard for heating system performance.
- Research Organization:
- Union Coll., Schenectady, NY (US)
- OSTI ID:
- 20002732
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 33rd Intersociety Energy Conversion Engineering Conference, Colorado Springs, CO (US), 08/02/1998--08/06/1998; Other Information: 1 CD-ROM. Operating system required: Windows 3.x; Windows 95/NT; Macintosh; UNIX. All systems need 2X CD-ROM drive.; PBD: 1998; Related Information: In: Proceedings of the 33. intersociety energy conversion engineering conference, by Anghaie, S. [ed.], [2800] pages.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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