Comparative Assessment of Hydrogen and Methanol-Derived Fuel Co-Combustion for Improved Natural Gas Boiler Performance and Sustainability

Weihong Xu, Ruhuan Jiang, Beidong Zhang, Yexin Chen and Yankun Jiang ()
Additional contact information
Weihong Xu: School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Ruhuan Jiang: School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Beidong Zhang: School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China
Yexin Chen: School of Industrial Design, Hubei University of Technology, Wuhan 430068, China
Yankun Jiang: School of Energy and Power Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430074, China

Sustainability, 2025, vol. 17, issue 3, 1-15

Abstract: Faced with a global consensus on net-zero emissions, the use of clean fuels to entirely or substantially replace traditional fuels has emerged as the industry’s primary development direction. Alcohol–hydrogen fuels, primarily based on methanol, are a renewable and sustainable energy source. This research focuses on energy sustainability and presents a boiler fuel blending system that uses methanol–hydrogen combinations. This system uses the boiler’s waste heat to catalytically decompose methanol into a gas mostly consisting of H 2 and CO, which is then co-combusted with the original fuel to improve thermal efficiency and lower emissions. A comparative experimental study considering natural gas (NG) blending with hydrogen and dissociated methanol gas (DMG) was carried out in a small natural gas boiler. The results indicate that, with a controlled mixed fuel flow of 10 m 3 /h and an excess air coefficient of 1.2, a 10% hydrogen blending ratio maximizes the boiler’s thermal efficiency ( η t ), resulting in a 3.5% increase. This ratio also results in a 1% increase in NOx emissions, a 25% decrease in HC emissions, and a 5.66% improvement in the equivalent economics ( e s ). Meanwhile, blending DMG at 15% increases the boiler’s η t by 3%, reduces NOx emissions by 13.8% and HC emissions by 20%, and improves the e s by 8.63%. DMG, as a partial substitute for natural gas, outperforms hydrogen in various aspects. If this technology can be successfully applied and promoted, it could pave a new path for the sustainable development of energy in the boiler sector.

Keywords: boiler; natural gas; hydrogen; dissociated methanol gas; combustion characteristics; sustainable fuels (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/3/929/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/17/3/929/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:17:y:2025:i:3:p:929-:d:1574740

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().