Ash melting behaviour of some low-grade Turkish coals and some imported steam coals

Traditional way for energy production is coal-fired power plants. Change in coal characteristics would result in change in ash properties (ash fusion temperatures, ash elemental composition) as expected and would finally and possibly result in slagging or fouling problems inside the boiler. The high temperature of combustion process and a low melting point of ash or vice versa might be considered as the main reason of these above-mentioned problems. In this study, 24 coal samples either low-grade Turkish coals or imported steam coals were collected and analysed in terms of their proximate analysis and the ash samples corresponding each parent coal were analysed in terms of elemental composition along with ash melting temperatures. Proximate analysis of each coal was performed in the order of characterisation. As regards to ash melting temperatures (AFTs), ash chemical composition contribution was deeply discussed. Still, in order to figure out what has a dominant role in terms of ash fusion temperatures (AFTs), coal and ash properties were taken into consideration at the same time. A model was proposed to predict AFTs by employing parameters of ash chemical composition and coal characteristics. The proposed model was not only user-friendly but also it is in good agreement with experimental results (R2= 0.71, R2= 0.77, R2= 0.84, R2= 0.88; DT, HT, ST and FT, respectively). © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group