Jul 30 2010
The environmental and energy markets present a very broad opportunity for Air Products (NYSE: APD) across many of its business segments. Increasing its focus on these markets, Air Products today commissioned a new Clean Energy Combustion Lab at its headquarters in Allentown, Pa.
This large-scale, state-of-the-art facility will enhance Air Products' position as a provider of world-class combustion technology. The advanced lab will be used to demonstrate how Air Products' industrial gases and technologies can improve a customer's energy efficiency and reduce environmental emissions.
"We will be able to use the lab for testing across all of our major businesses. The facility will allow Air Products to test actual fuels from customers and demonstrate at scale the advantages of certain applications operating in an oxygen-enriched atmosphere," said David J. Taylor, vice president, Energy Businesses at Air Products. "Increasing demand for large oxygen supply holds really great promise for Air Products moving forward. We have over 70 years of experience delivering oxygen safely, and designing and operating air separation units, and now we can demonstrate the capabilities of our related technologies at large scale."
The new lab leverages over 40 years of application knowledge and intellectual property in combustion and burner technology and expands Air Products' combustion capabilities from the original labs commissioned at the same location in the mid-1980s. The lab now gives Air Products the capability to demonstrate and optimize combustion and gasification of a wide variety of fuels including solids such as coal, petcoke and biomass; liquids ranging from light to heavy fuel oils, bio-liquids and other alternative fuels; as well as a wide variety of gaseous fuels. One of the key uses for the lab will be to test-fire various types of coal in oxyfuel combustion mode, showcasing Air Products' capabilities for carbon dioxide (CO2) capture for power plant applications.
The lab will show customers the efficiency, productivity and environmental benefits to be gained from Air Products' portfolio of combustion technologies. "Combusting fuels with pure oxygen, or in an oxygen-enhanced environment, can improve a facility's operational efficiency by saving fuel as well as increasing production. It also significantly reduces air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides and particulates. Of course, less fuel consumed means less CO2 emitted," said Taylor.
The facility is designed to perform oxyfuel and advanced burner combustion tests for traditional and new market applications served by the company. Oxyfuel combustion has been applied in markets such as glass, metals and refining with the primary advantages of increased productivity and lower emissions compared to air-firing. Oxyfuel also plays a key role in rapidly growing gasification or direct combustion applications of renewable fuels such as municipal solid wastes and biomass for electricity generation and high-temperature industrial processes.