Understanding the effects of oxyfuel combustion and furnace scale on biomass ash deposition

Recycled wood oxyfuel combustion is attractive for the advantages of reusing the waste bioenergy and reducing the carbon emissions. However, the changes in the fuel properties and combustion conditions can lead to uncertainties in the ash deposition. In addition, the understanding of the differences in the ash deposition between the pilot-scale and full-scale furnaces is very limited. We have performed ash deposition experiments on a 250 kW pilot-scale furnace for recycled wood air and oxyfuel combustion along with the EI Cerrejon coal combustion as a reference. A CFD-based ash deposition model, which uses the excess energy based particle sticking model, has been developed and the predictions are in qualitative agreement with the measurement data. The results suggest that, besides furnace temperature, the aerodynamics and ash physicochemical properties dictate the ash deposition. The recycled wood has a much higher deposition rate than the coal in the pilot-scale furnace; however, the biomass can numerically have a lower deposition rate under high velocities close to the full-scale boilers. This is mainly due to the biomass having a much lower sticking efficiency since it has high calcium and silicon concentrations and low potassium concentration. Although the effect of oxyfuel combustion is small and within the experimental uncertainties, it is found that oxyfuel combustion can affect the particle impaction and sticking behaviours depending on the fly ash properties and these effects occur in different ways in the pilot-scale and full-scale conditions. Great care should be taken to perform the transfer of the deposition observations from the pilot scale to the full scale and this is because the furnace scale has an effect on the selective deposition behaviour. In this paper a relationship between the fly ash properties (ash composition, size, etc.) and ash deposition for the woody biomass has been proposed. Additionally, the uncertainty analysis of the CFD modelling is undertaken, which indicates that the fly ash size distribution and the heterogeneity are responsible for the major source of errors along with the experimental uncertainties.