Overview of combustion research at CANMET

Abstract

Current combustion research activities at the Canada Centre for Mineral and Energy Technology (CANMET) reflect the increasingly important role that energy conservation and alternatives to oil are expected to make in meeting our future energy requirements and in reducing our dependence on foreign oil. Widespread use of substitutes for oil, particularly low grade resources such as coal and waste wood will, however, be heavily dependent on the ability of conventional and emerging combustion systems to cope with the disruptive conflicts caused by variations in fuel quality, on requirements for better equipment availability and on the implementation of progressively more stringent environmental constraints. To minimize these conflicts, Energy, Mines and Resources Canada has embarked on a systematic sequence of research, development and demonstration-scale (R, D and D) initiatives to stimulate the utiization and competitiveness of thermal coal in both domestic and export markets through a number of complementary in-house projects and external contracts, considered to have short- to intermediate-term benefits to industry and society. Many of the in-house projects are funded in part by industry, whereas the external contracts are either fully funded (100% government funding) or jointly funded (50% government - 50% project proposer). External contracts and shared-cost projects are an important adjunct to the CANMET in-house effort on combustion because research data can be more effectively transferred to industry and because the commercialization of novel combustion systems can be accelerated significantly.