Pulsed electron beam precharger

Abstract

Quarter Eight of the Pulsed Electron Precharging project was principally devoted to the operation of the E-beam precharger in the pulsed anode mode. We shall first briefly review the motivation for carrying out this project and the experimental approach used. The combustion of low sulfur coal for the purpose of generating electric energy in power plants results in the production of a flue gas containing very high resistivity fly ash. This fly ash is not easily collected by conventional electrostatic precipitators due to the large electric potential difference which develops across the layer of fly ash on the collector plate. If this layer of collected material is allowed to reach a thickness as great as is normally desirable before rapping'' the plates, then the collected fly ash is subject to re-entrainment into the flue gas stream due to back-corona. The back-corona corona problem is described more fully in the next section of this report. This re-entrainment problem can be eliminated through reduction of the voltage applied across the high voltage wires and the grounded plates of the electrostatic precipitator. This is not a good solution to the problem since the charging capability and collection efficiency of the precipitator system are both greatly reduced at the low voltages required to avoid the back-corona problem. Another approach to solving the problems inherent in collecting high resistivity fly ash in an electrostatic precipitator is to decouple the charging and collecting functions. At FSU an electron beam precharger is employed directly before (upstream in the flue gas pathway) the precipitator. This precharger can be optimized for the charging function while the downstream collector can be optimized for collection of the high-resistivity fly ash.