MODULE IV Condensing boiler technology Page 4

After our customer has realised that the best solution would really be to buy a new heating system, he decides to follow the advice of the district chimney sweep and makes an appointment with a company that is a member of the local sanitary, heating and air-conditioning association. The selected company sends one of its service technicians to the appointment with the customer.

The service technician meets the customer in his house. He gets the following information from the service technician:

2. Natural gas as the primary energy source for condensing boiler technology and comparison of different fuels

Various energy sources or fuels are used to produce the heat/thermal energy, heating and air-conditioning systems need. In order to obtain the fuels, the raw materials of the fuels have to be further processed, treated or refined accordingly.

Exercise 1

One can distinguish three different groups of fuels. Write down these three groups of fuels and give some examples for each group.

In regard to this group classification it has to be considered that the fuels in each group are produced in different qualities and with different technical characteristic values. For this reason, the owner of a heating system has to first answer the following two questions:

• Which fuel should be used ?
• Which fuel quality is available ?

You as the service technician had been informed that in the house of the customer a pump based warm water heating system with fuel oil burner is installed which has to be replaced because of its age and technical defects. You also had been told that the house of the customer has a natural gas connection and that the existing heating installation is also used to heat up drinking water. Equipped with this information you start to prepare yourself appropriately in order to be able to advise the customer as good as possible about the most effective solution to replace his old heating system with a new one.