Emission factors of biodiesel combustion in industrial boiler: A comparison to fossil fuel

Boiler is one of industrial facilities, which has energy intensive in producing steam or hot water, through fuel combustion. The large use of industrial boilers contributes to large emission. Emission factor is one of the most common methods to quantify emissions from combustion appliances such as boilers. As the biodiesel is an alternative fuel that has great potential to reduce emissions, it can be potentially used as boiler fuel. In this study, biodiesel combustion emission factor is determined through fuel analysis and direct measurements (stack sampling). A series of test was performed on a fire tube boiler, in which pressure of 3 bar, using palm biodiesel and its blend with petrodiesel in a variety of composition of biodiesel of 10%, 20%, and 30%. It is known that SO2 and CO emission factors in biodiesel combustion in boiler was significantly lower than petrodiesel, while CO2 and NOx emission factors tend to higher. Inconsistently, the stack sampling data showed that the emission of CO and CO2 was higher than petrodiesel, instead NOx emission of biodiesel combustion was 10% and 27% lower than petrodiesel. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.