THE INFLUENCE OF HEATING-OIL SPECIFICATIONS ON BOILER PERFORMANCE ANDEMISSIONS

In this paper, experimental data are presented on emissions from a boi ler of 40 000 kcal h-1 thermal capacity used for central heating. Five fuels were tested, with a span of cetane index from 24 to 47 and sulp hur content from about 0.13 to 0.33% wt; thus they covered the spectru m of current EEC specifications for heating oils. Among the conclusion s are that a boiler's efficiency falls with rising cetane index, where as the level of emitted particulate falls with rising cetane index but rises with sulphur content. Similar increases are observed for the em itted SO2, which exhibits an almost linear behaviour relative to sulph ur content. The NO(x) values fall with rising cetane index; the import ant observation here is that the accepted international limit NO(x) va lue of 120 mg m-3 at 3% O2 could not be attained even with the 'best' fuel used; this highlights the importance of using low-NO(x) burners.