Elemental Particle

In the age of energy conservation, we at Elemental Particle have focused all our efforts on contributing to the reduction of waste of this precious resource. We have developed in-house technologies to provide solutions to one of the prime challenges faced by many industries: combustion efficiency and carbon emissions.

Whatever the ultimate clean energy source turns out to be, the fact remains that numerous industrial concerns still depend on fossil fuels for their industrial combustion processes. The relatively low cost, availability and high heating value of solid fossil fuels like Coal, RDF’s, Petroleum Coke (Pet coke), Biomass and others, make them the prime sources to satisfy our industry’s needs today.

The problem with these fuels is the inherent losses that result in the combustion process, primarily those resulting from incomplete combustion. The environmental demands and constraints associated with these fuels has imposed the need for highly complex management of the optimisation process in their use, to maximise their efficiency and minimise the costs of operation, both from a financial as well as an environmental perspective.

Our own studies of real-world scenarios have shown that losses can be unacceptably high. In one case of a pulverised coal-fed 280 MW power generation system, combustion losses of 24% were measured. Our Elemental Particle solution projected a 14% reduction in fuel consumption and a 39% reduction in CO2 equivalent gas emissions for the same output. And the improvements are not limited to these two aspects. Savings also occur in the associated sub-systems, like the power consumption of the air feeding system, the fuel transport system, fuel grinding system and fuel gas treatment systems.

So our challenge was simple: Improve solid fuel combustion efficiency, and consequently reduce fuel consumption and combustion emissions. Our solution is the SiCO system.

SiCO Combustion Technology

The SiCO combustion technology improves the efficiency of the combustion process through the addition of a hydrogen-rich gas (HRG), whose purpose is to increase the rate of devolatilisation and the reactivity of the solid fuel. The SiCO system simultaneously monitors several combustion parameters and manages HRG injection to achieve a more complete combustion. It constantly adapts the HRG injection conditions to continuously evolve the combustion process up to the best possible efficiency of the combustion system.

All the system’s components communicate via a network grid linked to the control hub, which uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to perform these various tasks.

COMBUSTION MONITORING AND IMPROVEMENT
The system monitors collected data from the combustion system and transmits the pertinent data to the hub. This includes readings of fuel, air and flue gas mass flow and temperature along with flue gas emissions concentrations. The collected data is then feed to our artificial intelligence algorithm (SiCOAI) which in turn controls the HRG injection parameters (flow, distribution, pressure and temperature) to achieve an increasingly better combustion efficiency.

COMBUSTION MANAGEMENT
A real-time mathematical model of the ongoing combustion actively seeks anomalies in the process and identifies improvement opportunities. A continuous cycle ensures that the production of HRG and the resulting effect on combustion efficiency tends towards the point of optimisation of the process. Effectively, this optimisation process ensures that the systems runs as efficiently as possible, dependent only on its operational period.

SiCO Combustion Technology

All the system’s components communicate via a network grid linked to the control hub, which uses an artificial intelligence algorithm to perform these various tasks.

HOW IT WORKS

The SiCO system comprises an in-situ production and management unit for HRG gas (SiCOHRG), a control, data acquisition and artificial intelligence system (SiCOAI) and a client interconnection platform for data exchange and control configuration.

The SiCOHRG is installed at the existing combustion facility, where it only requires an electrical and a water supply. The system’s outlet is then connected to the fuel transport system in three to ten injection points. Communication between the facility control system and the SiCO system is achieved through the available bus protocol, and the system is ready to run.

The SiCOHRG system feeds back sensor data to our servers, where the artificial intelligent algorithm takes action by sending instructions back to the SiCOHRG system. These instructions are to control the injection parameters of the HRG gas and start/stop the system in case of a credited or detected anomaly. The result is an accurate control of the HRG injection parameters to achieve the best result possible.

The SiCO systems can be installed in existing or new combustion installations. The system design selected depends on the fuel type, fuel consumption and furnace thermal power output.

To increase flexibility of integration with existing combustion systems, we have developed four main models of the SiCO system, differentiated by their outputs: 5 m3/h, 10 m3/h, 50 m3/h and 100 m3/h units.

The advantages of the SiCO system method stem from its simplicity and ease of installation, quick return on investment, improvement of operational costs and reduced pollutant emissions.

We at Elemental Particle see this concept as a milestone towards combating two of the most critical ecological challenge of our time – pollutant emissions, and fossil fuel depletion. We can make a diference.