Industrial Wastes as a Fuel

Abstract

With the advent of scarce supplies and rising costs for traditional industrial fuels such as natural gas and fuel oil, a large amount of technical data has been collected and published to encourage their efficient use. This same data is readily available for coal since it was at one time a major industrial fuel and is still used extensively for electric power generation. However, combustion data for other fuels such as wood and solid materials typically generated as industrial wastes can only be found in widely scattered and more obscure sources. Therefore, this information is not always easily accessible to operating personnel at plants where these type fuels are being utilized. The resulting lack of proper information many times leads to poor fuel utilization because of less than optimum combustion efficiencies. Operational and maintenance problems may also be caused by a misunderstanding of combustion characteristics.