What Is Co-Firing and What Is the Process of Doing It

Co-firing in technical terms means the combustion of two types of fuels together. Usually this process is used when burning the biomass. Biomass itself is a non harmful material made from different types of plants, their roots and even dead plants are useful in making of biomass. Co-firing is a safe process to burn biomass and the fumes that it emits are not harmful even. The fumes mostly is in the form of carbon dioxide and this then goes in the atmosphere and is absorbed by the plants for their growing process.

There are other methods of burning different fuels for generating power and other purposes, but they all emit harmful chemicals which are damaging to the ozone layer and polluting the environment as well. These harmful chemicals are dangerous and harmful to humans mostly and then it effects the whole environment.

Co-firing is done basically by two processes. One process is called direct co-firing and the other is called in-direct co-firing. Direct co-firing can also be done in two types. In the first type you can blend the biomass with coal and then keep it in the boiler and the second method is to put the biomass without any coal of other material in the boiler and the boiler has its own heat to burn the biomass which is kept in special burners. This process is totally different from the usual method of burning process which mainly includes coal.

The second method of co-firing is indirect co-firing and this is like a process concept. The biomass in this process is heated and burnt to its gaseous or liquid form through thermal conversion and the fuel of the biomass mixes with another main fuel for co-firing. Indirect co-firing is of three types. First is indirect co combustion with pre-gasification, second is indirect co combustion in gas fired power plants and the third type is parallel co combustion.

Co-firing is also helpful and advantageous because the fumes that the process emits is not harmful at all, like other burning processes do which mostly emit sulphur dioxide and nitrous oxide which are very harmful to the environment and the health of the people. Co-firing called also be called eco friendly burning process because it does not harm the nature and the world is very slowly turning and enforcing products and processes which are eco friendly.

The other main advantage of co-firing is that it is less cost effective because the materials required for biomass which usually are wood, pieces of woods, dead plants and trees and mainly anything which is naturally organic are easily available and at a very low cost. These materials are cheap and they do not have the possibility to exhaust out like the other fossil fuels are expensive and they have the possibility of exhausting out in near time in future. Even these materials have varying prices so co-firing is the best alternative that we should use.