Carbon Burnout Project - Coal Fineness Effects

Abstract:

<p>This document is a report for the project titled 'Carbon Burnout Project - Coal Fineness Effects'.</p> <p>Carbon-in-ash presents an obvious cost to coal-fired generation plant in terms of lost fuel. High levels of carbon-in-ash can also inhibit the efficiency of electrostatic precipitators, which in turn can lead to increased particulate emissions, while the potential for selling fly-ash is dependent upon the level of carbon in the ash and excessive levels can result in additional disposal costs.</p> <p>The aim of DTI project 226 has been to establish good quality plant and rig data to demonstrate the effect of changing coal fineness on carbon burnout in a controlled manner, which can then be used to support computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and engineering models of the process. The project was designed to achieve this through: <bl> <li>Full-scale boiler trials.</li> <li>1MWth combustion test facility (CTF) trials at Powergen's Power Technology Centre.</li> <li>Laboratory tests of fuel and fly ash samples produced by the plant and rig trials, at Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (ICSTM).</li></p> <p>The full scale plant trials were successfully completed at Powergen's Kingsnorth Power Station, establishing plant data that demonstrates the effect of changing coal fineness on carbon burnout in a controlled manner. A full set of tests were also completed on Powergen's CTF, operating with four different fuel grind sizes. During these tests both carbon-in-ash and NOX levels were seen to increase with increasing fuel particle size.</p> This report is divided into the following sections: <ol> <li>Introduction</li> <li>Programme of Work</li> <li>Discussion of Results</li> <li>Conclusions</li> <li>Future Work</li> <li>Acknowledgements</li> <li>References</li> <li>Figures</li> </ol>

Author(s):

Colechin, M