July-September 1997 Issue


Special Reports

• PCAST Energy Recommendations Go To Clinton




• Energy Laboratory's "Low-NO_x" Burner Now in Commercial Use

On September 30, the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) delivered to President Clinton its report Federal Energy Research and Development for the Challenges of the 21st Century. More than 20 high-level executives from universities, companies, government, foundations, and other organizations served on the committee, among them Charles M. Vest, president of MIT. Jefferson W. Tester, H.P. Meissner Professor of Chemical Engineering and director of the Energy Laboratory, served as Dr. Vest's deputy.

The study was undertaken in response to President Clinton's request for recommendations on how to ensure that the United States has a national energy R&D portfolio that addresses its energy and environmental needs for the next century. A cover letter transmitting the report to President Clinton notes that the country's economic prosperity, environmental quality, national security, and world leadership in science and technology all require improving our energy technologies. Of particular concern is the development of technological options that will permit significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible economic, environmental, and social cost. An enhanced national R&D effort is needed to provide such improvements.

Accordingly, the report recommends an increase, over a five-year period, of about $1 billion in the Department of Energy's annual budget for R&D on applied energy technology. As shown in the table, spending (in constant dollars) would go from about $1.3 billion in FY 1997 to about $2.1 billion in FY 2003.

The largest shares of the increase would go to R&D on energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies. R&D on nuclear fusion and fission would also receive increased funding. Spending on fossil-fuel technologies would stay roughly constant, but the composition of the R&D supported would change in favor of longer-term opportunities including fuel cells and carbon-sequestration technologies. In constant dollars, the average real growth rate between FY 1997 and FY 2003 would be 8.3% per year. The proposed total for FY 2003 would return DOE's real level of effort in applied energy technology R&D to about where it was in FY 1991 and FY 1992.

The report also addresses other issues including commercialization strategies, coordination of applied energy technology programs and fundamental research programs, increased emphasis on international aspects of its energy R&D portfolio, and changes that will improve DOE's management of its R&D. The committee recommends that the Secretary of Energy be designated the national leader and coordinator for developing and carrying out the national energy strategy and that the President communicate clearly to the public the importance of energy and energy R&D to the nation's future.

The executive summary of the PCAST report can be accessed on the World Wide Web at <http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/OSTP/Energy/>.

Energy Laboratory's "Low-NO_x" Burner Now in Commercial Use

In the early 1990s, Energy Laboratory researchers designed a new industrial burner that could burn fossil fuels with much lower emissions of nitrogen oxides (NO_x)--precursors of acid rain and smog--than produced by conventional burners used by industry and the electric utilities. Commercial units based on that design and developed by ABB-Combustion Engineering Inc. (ABB-CE) are now being used at an industrial boiler burning oil and gas and at an electric utility boiler burning coal. At both sites, installation of the new burners on existing boilers proved fast and simple; NO_x emissions are now below the emission standards; and combustion efficiency is higher than before the retrofit. Additional installations are expected, including several at industrial and utility sites overseas.

The Radially Stratified Flame Core (RSFC) burner was designed by Majed Toqan, then principal research engineer at the Energy Laboratory and now with ABB-CE, and a team of researchers led by Janos M. Beer, professor of chemical and fuel engineering, emeritus (see e-lab, April-September 1992). Their design was based on a decade's fundamental and experimental research on "staged combustion," a process in which fuel is burned in two stages. In the first stage, the flame is fuel rich (oxygen deficient) and the temperature is high. Under those conditions, nitrogen coming out of the fuel converts to innocuous molecular nitrogen rather than to NO_x. However, some fuel remains unburned. Therefore, the second, lower-temperature stage is fuel lean, with abundant air that ensures that remaining combustibles burn up.

The conventional approach to implementing this concept is to create the two stages in separate regions of the combustion chamber by injecting air at several locations. But that approach creates practical problems, including the need to install air-injection ports along the combustion chamber. The RSFC burner instead uses "internal staging," a process in which all the combustion air is supplied through a single burner. The design of the fuel-injection and air-inlet nozzles produces a combination of combustion air swirl and delayed fuel mixing that creates fuel-rich and fuel-lean zones within a single flame. Injecting air downstream is therefore unnecessary. In tests in the Energy Laboratory's pilot-scale Combustion Research Facility, the RSFC burner reduced NO_x emissions by up to 90% burning natural gas, 70% burning pulverized coal, and 80% burning heavy fuel oil.

The RSFC is under exclusive license to ABB-CE. Based on mathematical modeling and experimental studies carried out at MIT, researchers at ABB-CE Services Inc., assisted by the ABB Power Plant Laboratory and members of the original MIT team, scaled up and developed the design to a commercial product. The results demonstrate the ability of MIT researchers to generate a novel concept based on fundamental studies, design and test a device based on that concept, and then work with a company to refine and adapt the device to make it flexible, reliable, and suited for use in commercial settings.

The MIT work was sponsored by ABB-CE, Babcock and Wilcox, Eniricerche SpA, ENEL SpA, Electric Power Research Institute, Empire State Electric Energy Research Corporation, Florida Power & Light Company, Southern California Edison Company, Southern California Gas Company, and the US Department of Energy.