Reliable and Efficient Combustion of Oxygen/Coal/Recycled Flue Gas

Mixtures (RELCOM)

S. Wilcox* and N. Fricker

University of South Wales

School of Engineering, CF37 1DL, Pontypridd, UK

Abstract for oral presentation and poster:

To reduce the impact of climate change, the power generation industry will be increasingly required to reduce its CO2 emissions. Oxyfuel combustion is a CCS technology where fuel is fired with oxygen instead of air, the flue gases then largely consist of CO2 and water vapour so that CO2 purification is readily achieved. The RELCOM project was designed to enable full-scale early demonstration oxyfuel plant to be designed and specified with greater confidence as well as providing improved assessment of the commercial risks and opportunities. The project was undertaken by a consortium of higher education institutions; AboAkademi, TechnischeUniversitaetMuenchen, University of Leeds, University of Sheffield, Universitaet Stuttgart, KatholiekeUniversiteit Leuven & University of South Wales, research centres;InstytutEnergetyki, International Flame Research Foundation and Fundación Ciudad de la Energíaand industrial partners;E.On New Build & Technology Ltd., Electricite de France, Doosan Power Systems Ltd. and EnelIngegneria e InnovazioneSpAbringing together the best in research facilities and technology development expertise.The project has delivered new underpinning knowledge and methodologies to facilitate the implementation of oxyfuel technology to both new build and retrofit coal fired boilers. So that at the end of the project there has been;

  • Development of a greater understanding of the underpinning technology needed to implement oxycoal systems on real boilers, including; fuel and combustion characterisation; flame radiation and explosion characteristics; gas-side corrosion; flue gas clean-up; and mercury emissions in oxy/coal/recycled flue gas.
  • CFD simulation and validation has been undertaken to develop an improved oxycoal burner design, techniques developed to monitor flame stability assessment and an improved understanding of scaling rules.
  • A series of tests at various scales from 100kW to 20MW have been used to underpin the modelling of the novel burner designs anddevelopa combustion monitoring and control system and develop appropriate scaling rules.
  • Finally, detailed engineering analysis of both retrofit and new-build case studies utilising the fundamental data and modelling tools developed within the project have been undertaken to remove the barriers for the implementation of oxyfuel technology.

Keywords: oxyfuel combustion, monitoring, control

Acknowledgement: The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° 268191.

* Corresponding author:

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