Posted on 02/15/2023 4:36:27 PM PST by aimhigh
Natural gas furnaces not only heat your home, they also produce a lot of pollution.
Even modern high-efficiency condensing furnaces produce significant amounts of corrosive acidic condensation and unhealthy levels of nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons and methane. These emissions are typically vented into the atmosphere and end up polluting our soil, water and air.
Now, scientists at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed an affordable add-on technology that removes more than 99.9% of acidic gases and other emissions to produce an ultraclean natural gas furnace. This acidic gas reduction, or AGR, technology can also be added to other natural gas-driven equipment such as water heaters, commercial boilers and industrial furnaces.
“Just as catalytic converters help reduce emissions from billions of vehicles worldwide, the new AGR technology can virtually eliminate problematic greenhouse gases and acidic condensation produced by today’s new and existing residential gas furnaces,” said Zhiming Gao, staff researcher with ORNL’s Energy Science and Technology Directorate. “An eco-friendly condensate eliminates the need to use corrosion-resistant stainless steel materials for furnace heat exchangers, which reduces manufacturing costs.”
To demonstrate the effectiveness of acidic gas reduction in a furnace, the researchers fabricated an AGR catalyst, enclosed it in a metal housing and installed the device on a standard commercially available high-efficiency condensing furnace. Results after a 400-hour reliability and durability test showed the AGR almost completely removed harmful emissions from the flue gas and produced a nonacidic condensate with a neutral pH level.
To examine the internal condition and soot distribution of the post-test AGR without damaging the device’s gas flow-through channels, the scientists used neutron computed tomography at ORNL’s High Flux Isotope Reactor, or HFIR. Unlike X-rays, neutrons can penetrate the metal housing to record images that are then used to produce 2D and 3D representations of the used device. “Such insights will enable improved AGR device designs for a more uniform and self-cleaning gas flow pattern,” said Gao. “This will also help alleviate excessive soot accumulation to enhance AGR-enabled furnace performance.”
Soot particles, which typically form because of the incomplete combustion of hydrocarbons, contain substantial hydrogen. Neutrons are especially good at detecting and mapping hydrogen and other light elements. “Neutron imaging and mapping after the AGR test provided details about how the flue gas flowed through the AGR, which revealed the heavy accumulation of soot particles in the middle of the catalyst,” said ORNL’s Yuxuan Zhang, a neutron instrument scientist at HFIR.
AGR technology would allow furnace manufacturers to use materials that are more affordable than the stainless steels used in most heat exchangers. This increased affordability could allow furnace manufacturers to sell more high-efficiency furnaces that meet California’s proposed new standards for residential and commercial furnace emissions. “Currently, AGR-enabled furnaces would require offline regeneration of the device about once every three years under normal use conditions,” Gao said. “The AGR unit could be removed by a homeowner or technician and carried to a regeneration and recycling location. This would be similar to how consumers bring their empty natural gas tanks for their outdoor grills to a dealer to exchange them for full tanks.”
In 2022, the ORNL AGR technology received a coveted R&D 100 award and was selected for targeted investment through ORNL’s Technology Innovation Program.
Note that the greasy dot-gov grifters here make ZERO mention of the cost of their boondoggle...
Jeez...just one more thing for my HVAC company to try to sell me on. They are relentless.
Well if you have to ask, you can’t afford it. That’s a plus in their book, pretty sure.
They've resorted to stealing Cadillac converters off parked school busses where I live. 12 at a time.
No, they don't.
My coal stove at the cabin, that produces a lot of pollution.
You can tell by the soot.
None of that with the natural gas furnace at home.
So sod off you silly bugger.
I bought one of these high tech gas furnaces 11 years ago. A couple of weeks ago it died and had to be replaced at a cost of 12 thousand dollars. The technician told me “that’s about how long they last”.
Yeah, the "science" ecogrifters are priming the pump for the coming propAgenda smears of clean natural gas.
from an old FR post:
The gers [yurts] they use in Ulaan Baatar are there out of necessity. They can be very very warm in the winter. I've been monitoring UB's winter, and it's experiencing many many days -10 and -20 temp days.
The problem is that the gers are heated by coal. Supposedly there's the good kind of coal and a not so good (but cheap) kind of coal for heating (that's about as technical as I can get with coal). In UB the Ger communities use the not so good kind. Hence in the winter, when the temps are -20 and -30, everyone heats their gers to the max. UB is then the most polluted city in the world (even worse than China cities).
The dot-gov grifters have an unlimited supply of OUR money.
Us peasants have to look at cost - those greasy squibs don't have to.
Yeah, I’ll bet you had 12 grand sitting around just burning a hole in your pocket...
SOOOOOOOOO—A $2500 furnace will need a $15,000 ADD ON.
RIGHT———
A modern condensing furnace produces very little “pollution”.
If the technology will allow furnaces to be produced more cheaply, fine. But I suspect this kind of furnace will require more frequent maintenance and be a lot more expensive to repair if something goes wrong.
MOST currently installed gas furnaces are in a pre-designated SPACE.
NOT a SPACE that can EXPAND in any way to accommodate such an ADD ON.
They want us naked, alone and cold, and then they want us to die.
We should return the favor.
Next thing you know, we will be wanted something to eat
Us peasants really complain a lot.
Re your pic of the AGR unit: It looks just like a mini-catalytic converter. Maybe that’s all it is.
It will be ‘disappeared’ by year’s end.
Just watch.
This article is absolute bullshit. Natural gas is methane (CH4) and when it’s burned, if the furnace is operating correctly, the only byproducts are water vapor and CO2. Nitrogen is a pass through from the atmosphere. If you get methane, the furnace is not operating properly. You will also get CO caused by incomplete combustion. A properly operated and maintained natural gas furnace will last decades.
Do gas furnaces produce more pollution than broken down windmills and solar panels?
More pollution than China???
Just curious.
“MOST currently installed gas furnaces are in a pre-designated SPACE.”
You are correct, with a lot of installations. But, it appears that object would be INSIDE the existing plenum or trunk-line or whatever the insulated fiberboard structure is called that carries the heated air away from the heater and on to the flexible ductwork feeding the various rooms. And that’s pretty clever.
The tubing you see in the photo is the heat exchanger. Depending on the age of the furnace, there may also be a secondary heat exchanger that’s not visible. You can see where one of the tubes feeds into a base at the side on the box. If the tubes or base corrode and a hole develops, burned gases (carbon monoxide) gets into the clean heated air that’s pumped to the house. That’s a dangerous AND big ticket $$$ repair. I’d be willing to consider one of these gadgets if it stops the corrosion.
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