Measurement of radiative gas and particle emissions in biomass flames

Abstract

Radiation is the dominant mode of heat transfer near the burner of coal and biomass-fired boilers. Predicting and measuring heat transfer is critical to the design and operation of new boiler concepts. The individual contributions of gas and particle phases are dependent on gas and particle concentration, particle size, and gas and particle temperature which vary with location relative to the flame. A method for measuring the contributions of both gas and particle radiation capable of being applied in harsh high temperature and pressure environments has been demonstrated using emission from particles and water vapor using an optical fiber probe transmitting a signal to a Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectrometer. The method was demonstrated in four environments of varying gas and particle loading using natural gas and pulverized wood flames in a down-fired 130 kWth cylindrical reactor. The method generates a gas and particle temperature, gas concentrations (H2O and CO2), total gas and particle intensities, and gas and particle total effective emissivity from line-of-sight emission measurements. For the conditions measured, downstream of the luminous flame zone, water vapor and CO2 radiation were the dominant modes of heat transfer (effective emissivity 0.13–0.19) with particles making a minor contribution (effective emissivity 0.01–0.02). Within a lean natural gas flame, soot emission was low (effective emissivity 0.02) compared to gas (0.14) but within a luminous flame of burning wood particles (500 µm mean diameter) the particles (soot and burning wood) produced a higher effective emissivity (0.17) than the gas (0.12). The measurement technique was therefore found to be effective for several types of combustion environments.