Fly Ash Formation and Deposition during Pulverized Fuel Combustion: Numerical and Experimental Investigations

Ash formation and deposition on heat exchanging surfaces are one of the key problems during power generation from solid fuels. Excessive deposit formation can lead to operational problems such as unscheduled power plant shut-downs or corrosion. Furthermore, ash deposition reduces the plant availability and efficiency. These problems are even more troubling when firing low-grade biomass such as straw or residue-derived fuels. This dissertation presents a combination of experimental work and numerical simulations in order to develop a modeling approach for the prediction of fuel conversion, ash formation and deposition with the aid of computational fluid dynamics.