Industrial fuel switching gains favor: combating rising fuel costs in industrial settings.

Industrial facilities using as little as 10 million British thermal units per hour can implement fuel switching, the strategy of temporarily changing to an alternative or backup fuel, to achieve cost savings or to continue operating when the normal fuel is unavailable. Many companies that buy substantial volumes of fuel, alerted by the events of the last decade and in an effort to reduce fuel costs, have built the flexibility into their facilities to choose fuel alternatives at relative short notice. Traditionally, much fuel switching activity has involved trade-offs of residual oil (No. 6 fuel oil, a much heavier and harder to burn fuel than No. 2 fuel oil) against ...