The role of pore structure on char reactivity. Quarterly report

The project has examined the effect of the pore structure diffusivity changes on the generation of NOx and N{sub 2}O from the Fluidized Bed Combustor. Furthermore, refinement of the techniques necessary to determine micropore characteristics from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) imaging have been further refined. The main focus of the past 3 months work has been generation of spherocarbon samples by oxidation in air at 500C. In past work, Spherocarbon has proven quite conducive to oxidation studies. It is virtually 100% carbon with high surface area (800 M{sup 2}/g as measured by BET). Past studies have focused on relatively low oxidation levels of less than 60% It is our intention to examine spherocarbon with the TEM at very high conversion levels (80%+). Under most characterization studies, this would be too high of a conversion level, but using new TEM techniques that have been developed here at MIT, we can now characterize the d002 spacing and lattice length of very small sample sizes