The Advanced Combustion Engineering Research Center (ACERC) at Brigham Young University and the University of Utah, in cooperation with other universities, 37 industrial members and six governmental members, has marked a decade of combustion research. This review emphasizes the contributions of ACERC over this past decade. While the state-of-the-art relating to fossil fuel combustion is discussed, the paper does not treat the substantial contributions of other researchers to recent advances in combustion science and technology. The mission of ACERC has been to develop advanced combustion technology through fundamental engineering and scientific research and educational programs aimed at the solution of critical national combustion problems. These programs have been designed to contribute to the center’s focus on the clean and efficient use of fossil fuels and waste materials, particularly coal and other low-quality fuels. The average annual ACERC budget over this decade has been about $4 million, with about 40% from NSF (ERC), 25% from industry, 20% from other federal and state grants, and 15% from participating universities. ACERC has 38,000 Square feet of administrative, computational and laboratory space at the two universities. Research equipment exceeds a value of $16 million. The team of about 140 researchers typically includes 30 faculty and professionals from nine academic departments, 10 post-doctoral associates, and 100 students at doctoral, masters and bachelor levels. Since ACERC was initiated in May of 1986, five books and over 700 journal and conference manuscripts have been published. Basic experimental research has provided insights, parameters and submodels toward development of comprehensive combustion models for industrial use. Eight software products from ACERC have been licensed to industries. Six new companies can trace their origins, in part, to ACERC. New NOx control concepts have been developed under an advanced, pulverized coal system development program of the Department of Energy. New work in coal structure, coal reaction processes and rates, methods of acid rain control, turbulent reacting flows, fuel minerals behavior, and fuel and waste conversion processes has given new insights into complex combustion processes, while new combustion modelling software products for large furnaces, gasifiers and rotary kilns are being used by industry. ACERC has also built a unique set of small, highly-instrumented, pilot-scale test-bed facilities which allow industrial and academic researchers to characterize the combustion of fuels and wastes in high-temperature furnaces, rotary kilns, fixed beds, fluidized beds (both bubbling and circulating), stokers and gasifiers. Many of the Center’s significant accomplishments can be categorized into five areas : (1) comprehensive combustion model development, (2) combustion submodel development, (3) pollutant emissions, (4) air toxics and (5) advanced combustion system testing. This overview highlights selected research accomplishments of ACERC during this past decade.