Understanding pulverised coal, biomass and waste combustion

Pulverised coal firing has been the dominant technology for generating power in utility boilers for almost a century. During this period, boiler designs have evolved through an accumulating collection of knowledge that has led to many empirical relationships that still guide current and future design directions to some degree. In the late 1940s the developed nations began to undertake coal research based on scientific principles to ensure the most efficient use of the primary energy resource represented by coal. As the body of scientific knowledge on the physics and chemistry of coal combustion grew, it was used to direct the improvements to efficiency required and, later, the control of pollutants produced during the combustion of coal. This involves not only the control of emissions of particulates, SOx and oxides of nitrogen but also of trace elements, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and, increasingly, CO2. There have been a number of developments in the coal-fired power generation sector including cofiring with secondary fuels, particularly biomass and waste and the development of radically different combustion systems (for example, oxyfuel) to meet carbon capture and storage requirements. This report sets out the recent advances in this area of coal science and how they are being brought to bear on the current challenges in the field of pulverised coal combustion. Acronyms and abbreviation