Wet way combustion and water vapor pump-cycle

Energy is a vague concept for most of us. Whether it's human, animal, derived from fire, the combustion of plants and other living matter, or fossil fuel, we all know how essential it is to life, if not life itself.

Fossil energy, by its very nature in a state of storage, is precious precisely because of the very existence of its storage and its capacity to be shipped in a state of storage. In a finite world, it is necessarily in finite supply, even if new deposits continue to be found from time to time.

Contrary to the fears born of the 1973 and subsequent oil crises, the use of fossilized hydrocarbons, however abusive, has not threatened industrial development or Western civilization. It is the environmental impact that remains the real threat to the long-term survival of the economic development model of the so-called developed countries.

While the transition to renewable energies is essential, oil and the hydrocarbons that make it up still have a long way to go to produce the electricity we need for our activities and comfort, and to power commercial and military aircraft and ships. Likewise, automobiles and other land vehicles are not about to dispense with their on-board stock of fuel, which is more or less polluting. And hydrocarbons still account for over 85% of the energy consumed by human activity on the planet today (late 2010s), despite public efforts and subsidies.

The aim here is to show that the challenge of using fossil fuels as cleanly as possible remains an essential one, since any progress towards greater cleanliness has both a resource-saving effect and a reduced environmental impact.

Among the little-known possibilities is wet combustion...

But let's not forget here that the number-one pollutant remains SO ₂ , which should require the abandonment of fuel oils with the highest sulfur content, or its elimination before combustion. This is a pollution of which sea freight is the biggest emitter, but which is also found in some smog-prone major metropolises.

SO ₂ causes inflammation of the bronchial tubes, leading to coughing and shortness of breath; it is also implicated in many respiratory and heart diseases. It is the main culprit in pollution and other acid rain. In this article, however, it is assumed that the fuel has been treated and is sulfur-free when it enters the combustion chamber. In this context, flue gas desulphurization (SO ₂ ) scrubber systems are therefore not discussed at length.

The expression "wet combustion" is an aphorism that contains the idea...