Increased combustion stability in modulating biomass boilers for district heating systems

One of the problems in small district heating systems is the large load variation that must be handled by the system. If the boiler is designed to cover the needs during the coldest day in winter time in northern Europe it would have to run at loads as low as 10% of full load during summer time, when heat is needed only for tap water production. Load variations in small networks are quite fast and earlier investigations have shown that existing biomass boilers give rise to large amounts of harmful emissions at fast load variations and at low loads. The problem has been addressed in different ways: Three new boiler concepts have been realized and tested: A prototype of a 500 kW boiler with partitioned primary combustion chamber and supplied with a water heat store. A 10 kW bench scale combustor and a 500 kW prototype boiler based on pulsating combustion. Bench scale boilers to test the influence from applied sound on emissions and a 150 kW prototype boiler with a two-stage secondary vortex combustion chamber. Development of control and regulating equipment: Glow Guard, a control system using infra-red sensors to detect glowing char on the grate, has been constructed and tested. A fast prediction model that can be used in control systems has been developed. Simulation of the combustion process: Code to simulate pyrolysis/gasification of fuel on the grate has been developed. Combustion of the gas phase inside the combustion chamber has been simulated. The two models have been combined to describe the combustion process inside the primary chamber of a prototype boiler. A fast simulation code based on statistical methods that can predict the environmental performance of boilers has been developed. One of the boiler concepts matches the desired load span from 10 to 100% of full load with emissions far below the set limits for CO and THC and close to the set limits for NO{sub x}. The other boilers had a bit more narrow load range, one with very low emissions except for NO{sub x} and the other with emissions close to the set limits. The Glow Guard worked as desired and will be a useful tool for control of combustion on the grate. The simulation of the processes inside the combustion chamber matches the experimental results well in terms of velocity and temperature. Species concentration were reasonable well described at the exit from the combustion chamber but were poorly described above the fuel bed. The dynamic model based on statistics is capable of reproducing the over-all dynamic behaviour of biofuel-fired boilers.Godkänd; 2002; 20110708 (andbra