Combustion Science and Technology, Vol.176, No.12, 2071-2104, 2004
CO-COMBUSTION of pulverized coal, pine shells, and textile wastes in a propane-fired furnace: Measurements and predictions
This paper describes in experimental and numerical investigation oil the co-combustion of propane with pulverized coal, pine shells, and textile wastes. Measurements have been performed in a large-scale laboratory furnace fired by an industrial-type swirl burner. Data are reported for in-flame major gas-phase species concentration. including NOx, in-flame gas temperature, and overall char burnout for three flames: a propane/coal flame, a propane/pine shells flame, and a propane/textile wastes flame. For comparison purposes, data are also reported for a pure propane flame. The experimental results show that CO and unburned hydrocarbon emissions from propane cofiring with pine shells and textile wastes can be important due to the relatively large sizes of the solid particles and that NO, emissions data reproduce the impact oil them of the fuel nitrogen content Via fuel-NO formation for the three solid fuels studied. Also, the cofiring of propane with pine shells and textile wastes yields particle burnout values much higher than that of the propane/coal flame despite the similarities of the three flames revealed by the in-flame data. This is because of file higher volatile matter content of the pine shells and textile wastes, in spite of their Much larger particle sizes. compared with coal. The experimental conditions were then simulated numerically. For the numerical predictions, gas-phase calculations were based oil the Eulerian approach whereas the particulate phase predictions were based on a stochastic Lagrangian approach. The turbulence model used herein was the standard two-equation eddy viscosity model. The gaseous fuel and volatiles oxidation was assumed to be Controlled by both turbulent mixing and chemical kinetics. Radiation was accounted for. The biomass/waste dcvolatilization wits simulated by a single-reaction, first-order decomposition model. Thermal-NO, prompt-NO, and fuel-NO mechanisms were all considered as potential contributors to the NO formation. Front the comparisons of the predictions with the experimental data, a good agreement was generally found. except in the near-burner region close to the furnace symmetry axis. The discrepancies are due to the limitations of the k-epsilon turbulence model to simulate high swirling flows. Moreover, the simplified fuel-NO model used herein requires further improvements to yield more accurate results.
Keywords:cofiring;pulverized coal;pine shelf;textile wastes;propane;in-flame data;measurements;predictions