Saving energy with latent accumulators? So how does is it work?

According to the German Federal Environmental Agency, 50% of all pollutants are generated as burners start up
and as they shut down. Mostly these pollutants are made up of unburned hydrocarbons whose energy has been
wasted. In-house publications of large manufacturers of central heating boilers confirm this fact and put the annual
number of burner starts in the region of 50,000.
According to a report conducted by the Technical University of Aachen, it is only after 3-6 minutes that a burner
reaches its so called normal operating level at which the combustion efficiency fully takes effect and achieves its
maximum value. If the heating service engineer were to take measurements during this period, the majority of
these boilers would have to be shut down! The service engineer knows this and therefore allows the burner to run
for 10 minutes or so before taking measurements. For this reason, an override button is usually provided at the
controller.
On the assumption that 50,000 burner starts take place per annum it seems unlikely that the burner would run for
longer than 3-6 minutes each time since if it did that would mean that the annual running time would be in order
of 2500 hours (3min X 50k =150,000 minutes = 2500 hours) A normal year’s running time is more likely to be
1,300-1,700 hours . Therefore a running time longer than 6 min must be reached very seldom and it would have
to be really very cold before it would occur.
If we base our calculations on a burner running for 1,500 complete service hours per annum, we can
assume that more than 1,400 of them will be for less than the 3-min-threshold and that a considerable
amount of fuels that are imperfectly combusted will have escaped into the chimney and that this will
happen up to 50,000 times a year. That means that the desirable normal operating condition is not
reached at all.
But that’s not all, each burner start causes another soot layer to be deposited too. Even a 1 mm layer
considerably hampers heat transmission and increases the flue gas temperature by about 50°C. Consequently,
the body of a furnace should be cleaned at least once a year. If up to now this work has been carried out once a
year for 50,000 burner starts, it should theoretically only be necessary after 50 years if as a result of using latent
heat storage the number of burner starts were reduced to 1,000 a year.
If only the first 20 seconds of firing were to produce poor combustion conditions then for 50,000 starts
that would mean that for 280 hours per year you would be belching unburned hydrocarbons directly into
the atmosphere. As a result, only 360 kWh would be generated from 100ltr of oil or 100 m3 of gas.
Ordinarily that should produce 1000kWh. Therefore the annual efficiency will be in the order of 36%.
These figures are confirmed in the report referred to above.
Burner and boiler producers themselves furnish further proof for these theses. The wise designer tries to
modulate the burner flame by any means he can. They attempt to adapt the burner capacity to the current
heating power. But unfortunately, the bodies of furnaces do not cooperate in this modulation. These attempts,
would really not be necessary if the theses mentioned above were not true. You can read all this in the inhouse
journals of boiler manufacturers.
Energy sources such as solar,wind,geothermal etc. exist whose performance and temperature can be adjusted
to our requirements. To use such sources effectively nature offers us a simple solution . Latent accumulators!
Reducing the number of start stop cycles and limiting the supply losses by using latent accumulators
that occupy the minimum of space
But what is so different in a heating system that has storage capacity? Viessmann , a respected manufacturer of
heating equipment refers to this method in their company journal wherein they describe their research with a gas
boiler for which the water volume has been increased from 12 to 42 litres and they explain the considerable
advantages of this measure. With Paraffin wax, however, 1,000ltr of storage can be used. Thus, the number of
burner starts can be reduced by 98% and the percentage of unburned hydrocarbons can be almost completely
eliminated. Thus a heating efficiency of 92% is achievable and 920 kWh of energy can be generated and
transferred to storage from 100 ltr of oil or 100 m3 of gas. Moreover, the boiler, water heater, oven or whatever,
remains dormant and cold for over 7,000 hours annually.
If you consider how simple the technology is – latent accumulator plus sheet metal bucket with a flame in it – one
could say that a simpler solution cannot exist. Higher energy savings are possible than those you could expect
from just installing a solar system. And now, solar energy and other energy sources become really attractive,
because the latent accumulator offers unlimited possibilities. (Source: TH Aachen, TFH Berlin, Viessmann
GmbH)