Abstract
The United States has more than 119 million homes, and 47% of them rely on natural gas as their primary heating fuel. However, most U.S. homes still use noncondensing units with an annual fuel utilization efficiency (AFUE) of ~80%, rather than efficient condensing furnaces. This is due to the high cost of condensing furnaces, which usually use expensive corrosion resistant super-ferritic stainless steel alloy heat exchangers (HX) to avoid corrosion and fouling acid condensation, along with the cost and difficulty of retrofitting the venting used by the replaced furnace. This article discusses a low-cost acidic gas reduction (AGR) catalyst technology1 that enables a novel condensing natural gas furnace with an ultraclean (i.e., nearly zero) flue gas and neutral condensate that is environmentally friendly.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 38-43 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | ASHRAE Journal |
| Volume | 65 |
| Issue number | 9 |
| State | Published - Sep 2023 |
Funding
This work was sponsored by the U.S. DOE Building Technologies Offi ce with Antonio Bouza as a program manager and ORNL Technology Innovation Program. This research used resources at the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center, a DOE Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The authors also thank ORNL colleagues who provided help in the work.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Office of Science | |
| Oak Ridge National Laboratory |