Prediction of fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emission when replacing gaseous fuels with renewable hydrogen or their mixture

Abstract

The paper is devoted to predicting changes in fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions when industrial equipment is converted to heating with renewable hydrogen or a mixture of it with other gaseous fuels, such as natural gas. The authors developed a simplified methodology that is appropriate for assessing changes in the energy consumption of equipment and the environmental impact of fuel replacement at the stage preceding the equipment reconstruction. The peculiarity of the methodology is that it allows the calculation of fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions when fuel replacement is accompanied by the implementation of measures aimed at improving the energy efficiency of equipment. The methodology can be used for heating and thermal furnaces in metallurgy and mechanical engineering, units for heat treatment of raw materials in the mining and processing industries, heating devices in the food industry, and water and steam boilers. In the example of replacing natural gas with its mixture with renewable hydrogen of different compositions, it is shown that the calculation error using the proposed methodology in comparison with the results obtained by mathematical modeling of fuel combustion, gas flow and heat transfer in this furnace does not exceed 1.5%.