A yellow flame at a refinery or chemical plant is a recognizable image. Waste gasses that are released in a chemical process could be dangerous if nothing is done about them. Flaring off the gases is usually the safest way to prevent excess gases from entering the atmosphere.
The flame of a flare is a source of annoyance. For the process technologist flares are a necessary evil and for the environmentalist they are ‘proof’ that gas is being burned to no effect. Both are right. A ground flare can make the flame ‘invisible’ but that treats only the symptom, not the ‘disease’. The disease is the quality of the off-gases that is often too low or too variable to do something useful with.
Ener-Core, a spin-off of the University of California at Irvine, has developed an installation which uses ‘flameless combustion’ that can handle off-gases with as little as 1.5% methane. Combustion temperatures are as low as 1000°C, which largely avoids formation of NOx. Together with a turbine, designed for the purpose by Dresser-Rand, it can provide energy from any low quality gas, from refinery tail gas to land-fill emanations.
Several units have been installed, including at Fort Benning (a United States Army base straddling the Alabama-Georgia border), at Orange County (both landfills) and at Pacific Ethanol. But the world’s first was in this country!Attero has installed one in Schinnen in 2014.
Holland Renewable Energy Technologies, located at the RDM-site in the Rotterdam harbor represents Ener-Core in this country.