Ignitability and Combustibility of Yallourn Pyrolysis Char Blended with Pulverized Coal Injection Coal under Simulated Blast Furnace Conditions

Abstract

Pulverized coal injection (PCI) is a widely used blast furnace technology aimed at reducing costs and increasing productivity. The prospect of blending PCI coal with a lower cost char, derived from Yallourn brown coal, is evaluated in this study by means of thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), flat-flame burner reactor, and drop-tube furnace experiments at four different blending ratios as well as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling. Yallourn char has desirable properties compared to PCI coal, including a lower ash content and a higher heating value, although the reactivity is lower and the ignition temperature is higher. Because the combustion behavior of a blend is not always easily predicable based on the performance of the individual parent fuels, two Yallourn char samples (YC-1 and YC-2) are analyzed after blending with PCI coal at four ratios. According to the particle ignition time, a maximum of 40 wt % is allowable for YC-1 char which is comparably reactive with the commercial PCI coal. Howev...