Oil boilers and new EU regulations

[ilikecobwebs]

While wandering through the website of a political party, I found this news item:
http://www.oilfiredup.com/site/news/item/991
suggesting that new EU regulations may force heating-oil consumers to fit new oil-burner units, to reduce emissions; many of which, in their design, are not well suited to British properties.
Anyone got any thoughts on this, since oil central heating is regularly used in old buildings and rural areas; also affects my house as well, so am chewing fingernails.

 

[FamilyWiggs]

As a fellow oil-boiler user, up with this we should not put!

Have signed the petition.

I'm sure the directive is well intentioned (they often are) - but the devil is always in the detail. Besides, I fundamentally object to the whole democratic deficit of EU directives like this whilst the Chinese continue to build fossil-fuel power stations at the rate of more than one per week (or so I understand).

 

[JoceAndChris]

aaaargh what now? What's a burner unit?

 

[Schoolmarm]

Don't know Joce but I signed anyway. Even though my boiler isn't in the kitchen or a small space. :lol:

 

[JoceAndChris]

I've signed too. This is a really stupid question, but what's a boiler? Is a Rayburn a boiler?

 

[FamilyWiggs]

A boiler? In my experience, it's usually an 8-pinter and a visit to the "itch" clinic the next day!

In this context though, anything that heats your water (either for domestic hot water purposes directly or via you hot water tank, or the water that runs through your radiators) is a boiler.

Usually it's a stand alone thing - and can be oil, gas, wood, or even chicken carcass fired.

However anything like a Rayburn, Aga, multi-fuel stove etc can also have a boiler attachment (commonly called a "back-boiler" - I think becuase it's round the back!) and heat water for taps or radiators.

In the more complex systems (as discussed here recently) you can have mutliple boilers that complement each other. I have an oil-fired boiler (no gas round here, love) and when I make the final connections ( :roll: ) I will also connect the log burner in to the system as it is capable of pumping out 14kw for free using my own logs through the winter.

Someone will be along shortly to blind you with science about condensing boilers, balanced flues, etc....

 

[Flyfisher]

Hmm.
The article refers to NOx emissions. Delving into my grey matter where ancient chemistry lessons were casually stored, I dimly recall that these are basically unwanted pollutants generated by incomplete (= inefficient) combustion. The car industry dealt with high NOx emissions many years ago using a combination of better combustion control (mainly through electronic engine management systems) and catalytic converters to further remove the reduced NOx from the engine exhaust. On the face of it, better fuel efficiency and cleaner exhaust gases - from any fuel-burning appliance - would seem to be a good idea.

A quick search for domestic oil boiler Nox levels threw up loads of existing boilers with less than "class 5" NOx emissions. Class 5 turns out to mean a max of 40mg/kWhr, which is more-or-less below the EU-proposed level of 35-70mg/kWhr. In fact, looking at a few current "low NOx" domestic oil boilers, they seem to have NOx emission of around 20mg/kWhr. It would be interesting to know what sort of vintage oil boiler would produce NOx levels of 250mg/kWhr when the existing state-of-the-art would seem to be more than 10x lower.

So, the EU is proposing reducing an astonishingly high-sounding NOx level of 250mg/kWhr to something akin to already available NOx "class 5" oil boilers, with many currently available domestic boilers already operating at half this level of NOx emissions. I'm not sure I can see the big problem.

Someone will be along shortly to blind you with science about condensing boilers, balanced flues, etc....

Oh dear. I hope I don't qualify as that 'someone'.

 

[worms]

may force heating-oil consumers to fit new oil-burner units...

I'm afraid this sort of thing annoys me. The petition purports to be about an EU directive that appears to be threatening our very existence, yet GIVES NO LINK to the supposed legislation and warns of dire consequences for British Industry.

Now if I am correct and this relates to Directive 2009/125/EC "establishing a framework for the setting of ecodesign requirements for energy-related products" (available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2009:285:0010:0035:EN:PDF), then all this does is legislate for the design of new products and doesn't touch anything already in use. It doesn't seem to affect the continued sale of existing products and in any event allows for a transition period before full implementation. Actual legislation would be for UK to enact and any penalties are to be laid down by individual Member States. The Directive encourages a self-regulation approach so that industry locally could set and police their own rules.

Design has to move forward, energy efficiency is a good thing. Correct me if I am wrong, but I don't see what is so scary about this.

 

[skier-hughes]

When I came to turn my rayburn back on after having the heating installed, I dutifully removed the burners to clean them and they were full of coke.
A quick google came up with several threads relating to new stds set by the EU for oil and that some oil had more of something in it, (can't remember what), but was still inside the stds and this caused rayburn/aga's in pariticular to coke up.
Most of these threads were from Jan this year onwards adn my last oil delivery was end of last year so was same sort of time as everyone else.

Just my tuppence halfpenny worth before I shoot off, more time and I'd google it again.

 

[ilikecobwebs]

One of the reasons I posted this here was because I knew that quite a few of you were well-versed on various regulations....hence by posting it, I hoped to draw out extra info and hopefully clarification. Problem with the EU is that one can never tell just how it will impose its regulations, or how quickly.