Study of the efficiency of using renewable hydrogen in heating equipment to reduce carbon dioxide emissions

Abstract

The results of theoretical study of operation of continuous furnaces heated by natural gas, renewable hydrogen, and their mixture are presented. The furnaces have the same design, but significantly different energy efficiencies due to different heat losses and capability of recuperative fume gas heat utilization system. The measures to reduce heat losses and to increase air temperature for fuel combustion can reduce specific fuel consumption for metal heating and carbon dioxide emissions by 25.8% for natural gas furnaces. For furnaces operating on mixture of natural gas and hydrogen, a greater reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is achieved in furnaces with worse energy efficiency, but with greater fuel consumption for metal heating. The paper shows the possibility of converting a furnace with better energy efficiency indicators to be heated by mixture of natural gas (75%) and hydrogen (25%). The measure reduces the natural gas consumption and carbon dioxide emissions to 9.2% due to the use of hydrogen with specific consumption 13.81 m3 per ton of metal. To ensure the same costs for metal heating when transferring continuous furnaces from natural gas to hydrogen, or their mixture, the ratio of prices for natural gas and hydrogen should not exceed 0.301-0.312.