Combustion characteristics of pulverized coal under high oxygen concentrations

Oxygen-enhanced and oxygen-fired pulverized coal combustion is actively being investigated. In the work reported here, the combustion characteristic and mechanism of three different rank pulverized coals (THSH anthracite, DL lignite, and SM bituminous) have been measured in 21%-100% O2 atmospheres using a fixed-bed reactor. Results revealed that the high oxygen concentration did not affect the ignition mechanism for all samples; it only makes the combustion curves shift to lower temperature levels and shortened the combustion time of the char. The results also indicated that as the oxygen concentration increases, the performance of combustion of pulverized coals could be improved, however, the O-2 affects much more for bituminous than lignite and anthracite, and obviously, the SM bituminous is the most suitable pulverized coal for oxygen enrichment ignition system.