Investigation of the effect of coal particle sizes on the interfacial and rheological properties of coal-water slurry fuels: Final report, July 1, 1994-June 30, 1996

The scope of the project is two fold: (1) examining particle size effect on interfacial properties of CWS fuels by measuring static and dynamic surface tension properties of specially prepared CWS samples containing different ranges of coal particle sizes, and (2) studying the effect of particle size on CWS atomization characteristics by measuring mean diameters of several different CWS sprays generated by sonic air blasting. The results show that both static and dynamic surface tensions decrease with increasing coal particle size and mean droplet diameter of CW-S sprays also decreases with increasing coal particle size. Based on the experimental evidence we conjecture that three different energies are competing in slurry atomization: (1) the internal capillary holding between particles and water, (2) the interfacial surface tensile energy at the slurry surface contacting air, and (3) the external air blast shear energy acting against the former two energies. The internal capillary holding force decreases with increasing particle size. This force is believed to play a major role in determining the effect of particle size on CWS atomization