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[0001] 1. Field of the Invention
[0002] The present invention relates to any methods, devices and systems for burning fossil fuels and/or utilizing the generated heat energies, particularly, a combustion method, a combustion device and a combustion system which burns a high water/oil ratio water-fuel emulsion using electromagnetic wave heating with reduced fuel consumption and carbon oxide emission (CO, CO
[0003] 2. Description of Related Art
[0004] In an industry where a large amount of heat energy is consumed or in an industry for manufacturing a variety of devices/equipment for converting/utilizing heat energy, particularly in a diesel engine related field and in a field related to industrial/domestic use boilers/burners where a reduction in carbon dioxide emission has long been demanded, research and development has been carried out regarding combustion of water-in-oil emulsion of water and fossil fuel, such as heavy oil, light oil and kerosene or the like, and it has been a common concern to find how to increase the ratio of the water to fuel.
[0005] Water-in-oil emulsion is an unstable fuel composed of oil and water with no affinity with respect to one another. They are forcibly admixed, and the emulsion is not a stably supplied product. Accordingly, in cases where water-in-oil emulsion is used, it is usual practice on application to make investigations into the technology related to the manufacture of water-in-oil emulsion. This emulsion should not separate into compositions within a short period of time after the manufacturing step, and should maintain a high degree of dispersion of oil and water. Even in cases where combustion device has adequately performed, the presence of insufficient conditions for water-in-oil emulsion results in an inability to obtain a favorable combusting condition. In order to achieve combustion of water-in-oil emulsion, the combustion device is required to perform not only as a combustion device but also as an emulsifying equipment.
[0006] For emulsifying equipment, it has been usual practice to utilize a system in which water, oil and emulsifying agent quantitatively weighed or metered at a given ratio are introduced into a mixing tank which has mixing blades provided therein and a drive motor to rotate the mixing blades for mixing the oil, water and emulsifying agent. However, water-in-oil emulsion produced by such a mixing system contains dispersed oil and water of large particle sizes, respectively maintaining properties of oil and water. The both particles can easily separate from one another and even when combusted immediately after the formation of water-in-oil emulsion, oil particles combust and water particles vaporizes with no interaction therebetween. That is, the water mixed in the oil has no contribution to generation of heat and, on the contrary, an ignitability of oil is deteriorated. As a counter measure, attempt has been made to adopt a multiple-stage mixing processes in which water-in-oil emulsion obtained from a first mixing tank is sent to and treated by second and third mixing tanks which have mixing blades formed in different shapes, respectively. Thus, the emulsifying system is inherently of a large-scale that requires a considerably large installation space regardless of for domestic use or for industrial use, and it is desired to provide a small-size and high performance emulsifying system.
[0007] Combustion device is also required to take reasonable measure for burning an emulsion fuel of high water/oil ratio. A water-in-oil emulsion fuel is naturally hard to burn rather than fuel with no water mixed, no matter how ideal the emulsion will be. Approach has been made to counter this problem, in which an ignitability of fuel is maintained by atomizing water-in-oil emulsion into a high temperature vaporizing chamber and burning a mixture of steam and heated oil gas produced by the chamber. Since a remarkable difference exists in volumetric ratio between liquid and gas, combustion device is required to have an extremely large-size vaporizing chamber equipped with a fuel consuming large-size pilot burner. The large-size vaporizing chamber consumes a large amount of normal fuel for maintaining high temperature, compensating heat of vaporization of the water-in-oil emulsion.
[0008] With the combustion system of the related art composed of emulsifying equipment and combustion device, as set forth above, the emulsifying equipment must be a large-scale system and, in addition, the vaporizing chamber of combustion device cannot be miniaturized. Therefore, it is hard to avoid various issues such as excessive increases in manufacturing cost, running cost, installation cost of the system and installation space in terms of a heat value resulting from the burner, and a status quo resides in that the system does not yet result in spread applications.
[0009] The related art combustion system has further involved in an essential issue where a difficulty is encountered in increasing a substantial water/oil ratio when observing the system as a whole for the following reason: That is, if combustion device is enabled to be configured to combust water-in-oil emulsion at the water/oil ratio of 1:1, the water/oil ratio of the whole system falls in the water/oil ratio of 2:1.
[0010] Moreover, even though combustion of water has been observed as a phenomenon, no theory has been established for a mechanism resulting in such phenomenon. In this respect, there is an influential theory in that steam explosion occurs in water as a result of combustion of oil in water-in-oil emulsion to cause extremely critical oxidizing reaction to occur for permitting water to be separated into hydrogen and oxygen and opinion of Agency of Industrial Science and Technology suggests that extremely critical oxidizing reaction is possible to occur at a temperature of 500° C. under a condition greater than 300 atm. Also, while in the related art, the water/oil ratio of water-in-oil emulsion to be available for combustion in the burner is selected to lie at a ratio of fuel and water of 1:0.3, the latest investigation made on the private sector demonstrates enterprise judgment in that water-in-oil emulsion is possible to combust even at the water/oil ratio of 3:1. However, in view of the opinion of Agency of Industrial Science and Technology set forth above, it is difficult to consider that the burner device with an open structure is able to establish the condition above 300 atm. Accordingly, this seems to be based on understanding that visual igniting phenomenon of water-in-oil emulsion is wrongly regarded as burning of water.
[0011] The present invention was made in the light of this problem. An object of the present invention is to provide an electromagnetic wave heating type combustion system which includes a compact emulsifying equipment and a combustion device with a compact vaporizing/heating chamber in a range for practical use, and to provide a method for burning water-in-oil emulsion at a high water/oil ratio, lowering a critical condition under which extremely critical oxidizing reaction occurs.
[0012] An aspect of the present invention is a method for burning emulsion fuel, comprising: atomizing emulsion fuel; and heating the atomized fuel by electromagnetic wave heating.
[0013] Another aspect of the present invention is a system for burning emulsion fuel, comprising: a device for burning emulsion fuel comprising an atomizer for atomizing emulsion fuel and a chamber in which the atomized fuel is subjected to electromagnetic wave heating; and a fuel supply system for supplying the emulsion fuel to the atomizer, which includes a mixer for mixing water and fuel, comprising a pair of first and second plates parallel to each other, each of the plates provided on its opposite face with a plurality of holes arranged in a honeycomb pattern.
[0014] The electromagnetic wave heating type combustion system has features related to technology of emulsifying fuel and water, and to combustion of water-in-oil emulsion.
[0015] The feature related to emulsifying technology resides in the use of a static mixer with no movable parts such as those used in the mixing device that incorporates the mixing blades of the related art. The static mixer is configured in a simple structure composed of only a honeycomb labyrinth unit that is disposed in a passage that admits the flow of rough blend mixture between water and fuel that are quantitatively weighed or metered and makes it possible to produce nearly the most ideal water-in-oil emulsion, that can be obtained in the present days, within a short period of time, while enabling to achieve remarkable miniaturization in scale of a device. Also, the static mixer for use in the combustion system of the present invention has been already independently issued as a patent for a static mixer.
[0016] The honeycomb labyrinth unit for use in the static mixer is comprised of a diverging section and a converging section. The diverging section serves to compel water and fuel, simultaneously forced into one portion, to be split through labyrinth passageways into multiple flow streams. The labyrinth passageways are formed in a mesh-like configuration rather than a tree-like configuration to provide a mechanism by which the flow of mixture is split in the multiple streams while repeatedly causing flow splitting and confluence in part. Also, the converging section has a function to permit the flows of water and fuel, split in the multiple streams, to pass through labyrinth passageways and joined at one portion. Thus, the diverging section and the confluence honeycomb are used in a pair to form a honeycomb labyrinth unit in one unit.
[0017] In addition, a particularly advantageous point of the static mixer resides in a capability of increasing a dispersion rate of oil and water in proportion to the number of units depending upon the number of units of the honeycomb labyrinth units to be used. Accordingly, the number of units to be used of the honeycomb labyrinth units can be freely determined based on applications of water-in-oil emulsion and demanded water/oil ratios, provided that an increase in the number of units results in an increase in given force feed pressure under which roughly blended oil and water fuel is press forced to the static mixer. Also, due to the absence of the movable component parts, the honeycomb filer unit is extremely small in structure and, so, it is possible to neglect a probability of enlargement in scale of the device due to an increase in the number of units.
[0018] Further, the feature related to combustion of water-in-oil emulsion of the present invention resides in that water-in-oil emulsion is combusted by lowering the temperature critical point and the pressure critical point at which extremely critical oxidizing reaction occurs in water molecule contained in water-in-oil emulsion. And, as a means to achieve such a purpose, a process is adopted in which a high frequency coil is wound on a combustion chamber to ignite water-in-oil emulsion under a state where water molecule of water-in-oil emulsion sprayed into the combustion chamber are heated with electromagnetic waves. It is widely known that high frequency electromagnetic waves are effective to achieve excitation heat of the water molecules and applied in an electronic oven, etc.
[0019] And, when water-in-oil emulsion is sprayed into a high frequency electromagnetic field, initially, steam explosion occurs in water contained in a fuel droplet in a micro-size unit prior to combustion of oil. This point is particularly important and fundamentally different from a combustion mechanism of water-in-oil emulsion in the related art device. That is, in the related art device and theory, oil combusts in advance of water to cause steam explosion to occur in water under resulting pressure and heat and, subsequently, combustion shifts to extremely critical oxidizing reaction of water. This point is mostly questionable because of the following reason: It is considered that due to a probability wherein at time when water shifts to extremely critical oxidizing reaction, combustion of oil is terminated and heat energy resulting from combustion of oil is consumed for steam explosion of water, there is almost no energy left for inducing steam to be subjected to extremely critical oxidizing reaction.
[0020] In contrast, the present invention contemplates the use of energy resulting from high frequency electromagnetic waves for permitting steam explosion to occur in advance and then causing oil to combust. And, in the influence of energy resulting from combustion of oil, steam rapidly reaches to extremely critical state for combustion. That is, the water molecule changes in mode to hydrogen gas and oxygen gas by which combustion occurs. Here, due to a probability wherein no temperature and pressure in the combustion chamber exceed certain limitations in the open device, with one end being opened, such as the burner device, it is reasonable to consider that the temperature critical point and the pressure critical point at which extremely critical oxidizing reaction occurs in the water molecule are lowered, and this is based on a structure wherein water-in-oil emulsion is ignited under a condition where fuel is heated with the electromagnetic waves.
[0021] The invention will now be described with reference to the accompanying drawings wherein:
[0022] FIG.
[0023]
[0024]
[0025]
[0026]
[0027]
[0028]
[0029] Embodiments of the present invention will be explained below with reference to the drawings, wherein like members are designated by like reference characters.
[0030] As shown in
[0031] The mixer system
[0032] The mixed water and fuel is pressurized and fed to the static mixer
[0033] The static mixer
[0034] The produced water-in-oil emulsion is once stored in a depressurization tank
[0035] The burner
[0036] The description will be made to the detail of the respective components of the combustion system S
[0037] The housing
[0038] The honeycomb labyrinth unit
[0039] The water and fuel or water-in-oil emulsion introduced through the inlet
[0040] As shown in
[0041] With a second embodiment of the present invention shown in
[0042] In the foregoing description, an emulsifying agent is not necessarily required for an application in which a water-in-oil emulsion is used within a short period of time after being discharged from the static mixer
[0043] As set forth above, the electromagnetic wave heating type combustion system of the present invention is possible to effectively combust water-in-oil emulsion, by the provision of an atmosphere of electromagnetic wave heating generated by the high frequency coil, while lowering the temperature critical point and the pressure critical point at which extremely critical oxidizing reaction occurs in water molecule. The static mixer can emulsify water and fuel into water-in-oil emulsion at a high degree of dispersion, enabling water-in-oil emulsion with a high water/oil ratio to be stably combusted, eliminating the need of providing a large-sized vaporizing/heating chamber, which is preheated at a high temperature using normal fuel, for a small-sized practical burner.
[0044] The preferred embodiments described herein are illustrative and not restrictive, and the invention may be practiced or embodied in other ways without departing from the spirit or essential character thereof. The scope of the invention being indicated by the claims, and all variations which come within the meaning of claims are intended to be embraced herein.
[0045] The present disclosure relates to subject matter contained in Japanese Patent Application No. 2003-023712, filed on Jan. 31, 2003, the disclosure of which is expressly incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.