Research on carbon content in fly ash from circulating fluidized bed boilers

The carbon content in the fly ash from most Chinese circulating fluidized bed (CFB) boilers is much higher than expected, which directly influences the combustion efficiency. In the present paper, carbon burnout was investigated in both field tests and laboratory experiments. The effect of coal property, operation condition, gas-solid mixing, char deactivation, residence time, and cyclone performance are analyzed seriatim based on a large amount of experimental results. A coal index is proposed to describe the coal rank, having a strong effect on the char burnout. Bad gas-solid mixing in the furnace is another important reason of the higher carbon content in the fly ash. Some chars in the fly ash are deactivated during combustion of large coal particles and have very low carbon reactivity. Several suggestions are made about design, operation, and modification to reduce the carbon content in the fly ash.