Gaseous Fuels

Shankar Raman Dhanushkodi, PhD

 Gas distributed to towns and cities

Source: gasification of coal.

Partial oxidation of coal in a bed with a carefully controlled air supply and steam
injection

Product: gas and also coke.

Town gas

Two step process

• C + O2 → CO2
• CO2 + C → 2CO
 Methane is obtained with
If VOC is high CO

Water is injected into mixed Syngas is produced (C +

Town gas

reactor a separate reactor H2O → CO + H2)

 The initial processing, compression and heating at
Processing governor installations uses the gas as an energy source.

The energy overhead of the winning and distribution of

a natural gas is about 6% of the extracted calorific value.

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 The composition of a natural gas will vary
according to where it was extracted from, but the
principal constituent is always methane.

There are generally small quantities of higher

Natural gas

hydrocarbons together with around 1% by volume

of inert gas (mostly nitrogen).
 Classify fuels

key parameter for the heat capacity of a gaseous fuel

Indicator for the interchangeability of gases

Wobb Index

Gases with same Wobb index produce an identical burner heat load at the same
burner pressure.

The Wobb index of a gaseous fuel can be adjusted by

• diluting it with inert or lean gas (e.g., steam, nitrogen)
• improved by adding rich gases (e.g., evaporated LNG).

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 Wobb Index
If Wobble index of the gas are
Key parameter for the heat Indicator for the
Metric to classify the fuels. same produce same heat load
capacity of a gaseous fuel interchangeability of gases
for the given pressure.

How to change WI
• Add inert or lean gas (e.g., steam,
nitrogen)
• Add rich gases (e.g., evaporated LNG).