Particulate matter reduction in residual biomass combustion

Abstract

Counteracting emissions of particulate matter (PM) is an increasingly important goal in sustainable biomass combustion. This work includes a novel approach to investigate the PM emissions, originating from residual biomass combustion, at different combustion conditions in a lab-scale grate-fired furnace and includes in situ PM measurements by using on-line sensors. The interior furnace design allows installation of baffles to suppress the emissions by controlling the residence time. Moreover, the two-thermocouple method is used to measure the true gas temperature, and an on-line spatially resolved PM measurement method is developed to study the evolution of the PM concentration throughout the furnace for different experimental conditions thereby allowing accurate in-situ measurement of the PM reactivity. Experimental results and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses are utilized in the current work to develop a kinetic model for reduction of particulate matter emissions in biomass combustion. The discrete particle model (DPM) is utilized in CFD analysis to improve the understanding of the particle temperature and residence time distribution which are difficult to quantify experimentally. By combining the experimental measurements of real soot formed during biomass combustion and information from the CFD analyses, a predictive kinetic model for PM10 reduction in biomass combustion is successfully developed.