Pressurized Coal Water Slurry Oxy-combustion (ongoing)
Oxy-combustion is an promissing technology for CO2 capture and sequestration. The pressurized oxy-combustion features of flameless and low temperature, so that achieves good environmental performance.
Burning in an environment with mixed pure O2 and recirculated flue gas, the oxy-coal combustion shows new flame features such as ignition delay and destabilization because of the unique physical properties of CO2. Fundamentals of oxy-combustion will be studied systematically to understand these new features, and improve the combustion efficiency and environment performance.
A high fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) framework is implemented to study the flame regimes, flow patterns, and radiation heat transfers. Turbulence, radiation, chemistry-turbulence interaction and reaction kinetics will be simulated. Moreover, the coal water slurry atomized droplets fate indicates the importance of sub-models representing char particle size changes during the combustion processes, such as agglomeration, fragmentation and slagging combustion, which will be developed and integrated into the CFD framework.
Advanced designs of the oxy-combustor will be proposed and studied in the future.(see more here)
Coal gasification fundamental (2006-2008)
Coal gasification is applied widely in IGCC, Polygeneration and chemicals production processes. The fundamentals of gasification was studied on the Wire Mesh Reactor (WMR) test facility in Coal Poly-generation Technologies Lab at GE Global Research.
Pyrolysis is the first step of coal gasification. Volatiles including tar, light gases, and water will evolve during coal pyrolysis. The yield and evolution kinetics of pyrolysis products will strongly govern the characteristics of the flame near the burner. Therefore, experimental study of the gas phase species and water evolution kinetics is indispensable for high fidelity coal gasification modeling and design optimization.
Moreover, the gasification kinetics of interested coal samples with steam and CO2 were tested in this novel experiment rig.
Mercury emission from typical pulverized coal power plants of China (2004-2006)
Mercury emission from coal combustion has been an global pollution and caused research interest in the energy and environment field. As the most important fossil fuel in China, the annual consumption of coal is over 2 billion tons. The mercury emission level and speciation from typical pulverized coal power plants were studied by applying the Ontario Hydro Method in 6 power plants of China.
Factors affecting the gas phase mercury speciation transfermation during the flue gas cooling process was studied by kinetic and thermodynamic modeling. The modeling and field test results show the co-effect of chlorine and basic fly ash compositions to mercury speciation transfermation.
Publication List
Chen L, Yong S Z, Ghoniem A, Oxy-Fuel Combustion of Coal: Characterization, Fundamentals, Stabilization and CFD Modeling, submitted in Jan 2011, under review.
Chen L, Gazzino M, Ghoniem A, CFD Modeling of Oxy-Coal Combustion: Approaches and Experimental Validation, the 36th International Technical Conference on Clean Coal & Fuel Systems, Clearwater FL, submitted Jan 2011.
Chen L, Ghoniem A, Swirl Number Effect in Pressurized Oxy-coal Combustion: A Computational Study, the 35th International Technical Conference on Clean Coal & Fuel Systems, Clearwater FL, June 6-10 2010.
Chen L, Zeng C, Guo X, et al., Gas Evolution Kinetics of Two Coals during Rapid Pyrolysis, Fuel Processing Technology, 91(2010), 848-852.
Cai Zeng, Lei Chen, Gang Liu, Wenhua Li, Baoming Huang, Hongdong Zhu, Bing Zhang, Vladimir Zamansky, Advances in the development of wire mesh reactor for coal gasification studies, Review of Scientific Instruments 79(2008) 084102.
Lei CHEN, Yuqun ZHUO, Xianglong ZHAO, Qiang YAO, Liang ZHANG£¬Thermodynamic comprehension of the Basic ash compositions¡¯ effect on Gaseous Mercury Transformation, Energy & Fuels 21(2007), 501-505.
CHEN Lei, D UAN Yufeng, ZHUO Yuqun, YANG Liguo, ZHANG Liang, YANG Xianghua,YAO Qiang, JIANG Yiman, XU Xuchang£¬Mercury transformation across particulate control devices in six power plants of China: the co-effect of chlorine and ash composition, Fuel 86 (2007) 603-610.
CHEN Lei, YAO Qiang, ZHUO Yuqun, ZHAO Xianglong, Kinetics modeling of homogenous mercury transfermation in coal-derived flue gas cooling process, Journal of engineering thermophysics, 28 (2007) 343-346.
