In this study, a laser sheet technique and PLIF (Planar laser-induced fluorescence) are applied to a laboratory-scale pulverized coal burner of the open type, and the spatial relationship of the pulverized coal particle zone and the combustion reaction zone is examined by simultaneous measurement of Mie scattering and OH-LIF images. It is found that this technique can be used to investigate the spatial relationship of the combustion reaction zone and pulverized-coal particles in turbulent pulverized-coal flames without disturbing the combustion reaction field. In the upstream region, the combustion reaction occurs only in the periphery of the clusters where high-temperature burned gas of the methane pilot flame is entrained and oxygen supply is sufficient. In the downstream region, however, combustion reaction can be seen also within clusters of pulverized-coal particles, since the temperature of pulverized-coal particles rises, and the mixing with emitted volatile matter and ambient air is promoted.

These days, the development of various pre- and post-combustion techniques has been pursued in order to reduce the emission of CO2 in the fleet of coal-fired power plants, since it is of great importance to each country’s energy production while also being the single largest emitter of CO2. As part of this kind of research efforts, in this study, a novel burning method is tried by the co-burning of the pulverized coal with the stoichiometric mixture of the hydrogen and oxygen (H2+1/2O2) called as HHO. For the investigation of this idea, the commercial computational code (STAR-CCM+) was used to perform a series of calculation for the IFRF (International Flame Research Foundation) coal-fired boiler (Michel and Payne, 1980). In order to verify the code performance, first of all, the experimental data of IFRF has been successfully compared with the calculation data. Further, the calculated data employed with pure coal are compared with the co-burning case for the evaluation of the substituted HHO performance. The reduced amount of coal feeding was fixed to be 30% and the added amount of HHO to produce a similar flame temperature with pure coal combustion was considered as 100% case of HHO addition. This value varies from 100 to 90, 80, 60, 50, 0% in order to see the effect of HHO amount on the performance of pulverized coal-fired combustion with the 30% reduced coal feeding. One of the most important thing found in this study is that the 100% addition of HHO amount shows approximately the same flame shape and temperature with the case of 100% coal combustion, even if the magnitude of the flow velocity differs significantly due to the reduced amount of air oxidizer. This suggests the high possibility of the replacement of the coal fuel with HHO in order to reduce the CO2 emission in pulverized coal-fired power plant. However, an extensive parametric study will be needed in near future, in terms of the reduction amount of coal and HHO addition in order to evaluate the possibility of the HHO replacement for coal in pulverized coal-fired combustion.

The world consumption of the coal has been increased very sharply during past few years result from oil exhaustion, fluctuation in the price of oil and low price competitiveness of alternative energy. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has estimated that coal will be available for over 110 years, with coal reserves of close to 860 billion tons. The pulverized coal is blended coal powder that the particle diameter under 10μm. It has advantage of combustion efficiency and flame stabilization. The use of coal blends is becoming increasingly common in pulverized-coal power plants because it improves the economic performance of these plants by diversifying the fuel range. However, although blending can improve combustion behaviors and decrease gaseous pollutant emissions, it has difficulty of design and operating the pulverized coal combustor because despite the small particle size, combustion process of pulverized coal is exceedingly complex. Because of that the detail study on the combustion characteristic is important for increasing of efficiency. As a base investigation for numerical calculation of pulverized coal combustion, this study verified validity of models and compare the numerical calculation results with the experimental results.