Effect of CO₂ during Coal Pyrolysis and Char Burnout in Oxy-Coal Combustion

Abstract

One of the primary concerns in oxy-coal combustion is whether or not conventional coal pyrolysis and char burnout model can be used because of the presence of high CO 2 in gas medium around coal particles. This paper attempts to understand the effect of high concentration of CO 2 during coal pyrolysis and oxidation by conducting experiments in a drop-tube reactor and a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA). Two ranks of bituminous coal particles were pyrolyzed in CO 2 and Ar atmosphere during the pyrolysis tests and in 21% O 2 /79% CO 2 and air during combustion tests. The results showed that the differences observed during pyrolysis and combustion tests conducted with and without CO 2 can be attributed to the effects of char–CO 2 reaction. This result implies that char–CO 2 reaction should be included in model reactions while modeling coal pyrolysis or char oxidation in oxy-coal combustion. Furthermore, a faster increase in the rate of char burnout during combustion in O 2 /CO 2 relative to that with air for an lvb coal was due to lower activation energy of C–O 2 and higher activation value of C–CO 2 reaction compared to that of an hvCb coal. This result implies that some coals may be more suitable for oxy-coal combustion which can be identified based on the intrinsic activation energy value of char–CO 2 and char–O 2 reactions.