Increasingly, in the entire industrial landscape and in the ceramic industry in particular, energy efficiency and energy cost control are the key to succeeding in being competitive.
For this reason, the industry has for decades embarked on a path based on technological innovation, made up of plants developed on technologies with little impact on the environment and high performance in terms of containing consumption. To which are added solutions such as cogeneration and photovoltaics.
On cogeneration, i.e., the use of methane gas for the combined generation of electricity and thermal energy, Cefla, a company devoted to the development of innovative products and technologies to serve companies in various production fields, including the ceramic industry, is focusing. In particular, the latest frontier explored by Cefla is fuel cells.
Fuel cells for Cefla
"There are many types, but the most efficient are those fueled bysolid oxides, the so-called SOFCs (Solid Oxide Fuel Cells), currently known as Fuel Cells, which make it possible to generate electrical and thermal energy in a clean way because they do not produce combustion, unlike what generally happens with methane. Not only that, Fuel Cells have a generation efficiency, i.e., conversion of the chemical energy of the gas into electricity, that is about 25 percent higher than known systems on the market for electricity generation and cogeneration."
Davide Ghidoni, Cefla proposal engineer
Compared to traditional technologies, then, Fuel Cells are more efficient and pollute less. They are also systems thathave an extremely long life, more than 20 years, do not need maintenance like traditional cogeneration systems, and do not use fluids such as oil, urea or other fossil-derived chemicals. But Fuel Cells seem to be the answer to the other aspects of environmental sustainability as well. They are in fact hydrogen ready, that is, already fully usable for hydrogen operation, have a low noise impact and near-zero waste production, since the waste material produced by the erosion to which the fuel room is subjected during its operation is 98 percent recycled within the new units.
Beyond Fuel Cells,all CHP-based technologies are environmentally sustainable.
First of all, because producing electrical and thermal energy (in the form of hot water or flue gas at high temperatures) from a single energy source, methane, saves money compared to traditional systems that require more gas at the source to produce those same energy sources.
Then because the process of producing the energy takes place directly within the site where it is used for manufacturing processes, thus in close proximity to the user, making the system more efficient, with obvious resource savings. So the advantage is to make the electric and thermal generation process more efficient.
What advantages does the use of Fuel Cells bring to the ceramics industry?
In this industry, the Fuel Cell has an important application because, having hot air as the heat carrier, it is able to use 100 percent of the heat that is produced in a ceramic industry, which uses mostly hot air itself. The cost-benefit advantage lies in the near certainty of being able to use the entire heat output within the manufacturing process, thus avoiding the dissipation that comes with motors, which produce hot water instead.
In short, the goal of sustainability sharpens the ingenuity and produces surprising and ever-evolving solutions.