Combustion and gas cleaning, part 2

Research Project, 2020 –

The area of industrial combustion is developing fast the last two years and the funding will be used in activities to anticipate and to conduct pre-studies, to be able to be a preferred partner for the
industry. Three main activities are planned supported by the funding:
Area 1: The new infrastructure and new boiler (3 MW suspension-fired unit) at the Div. of Energy Technology (KC 4.0) is being deployed in a shake-down spring 2019 and will be available for
experiments fall 2019. The new unit is designed to cover peak load conditions and experiments will be conducted during the cold periods during winter. According to plan, new diagnostic tools for flame/high-temperature speciation/radiation and temperature determination will be developed in the coming plans. Particular focus will be put on the advancement of diode lasers for industrial use for which there is tremendous potential, but little knowledge in industry. Also, the new 3 MW unit at Chalmers will be used the coming season to assess challenging fuels (mainly car-fluff and mixtures thereof) together with industrial partners (STENA, PetroBio, Uddevall Energi, Maabjerg Energy Center, Babcox & Wilcox Vöhlund, Götaverken Miljö, General Electric, Pacificorp).
Area 2. A new area that has developed fast the last two years is the new wave of electrification (the second since the introduction of nuclear power plants in Sweden). The combustion and CO 2 capture
group (lead by KA) is working with three industrial partners: Cementa AB, STENA Metall/Aluminium and LKAB. The aim of the work is to assess which are the most reasonable alternatives for
electrification of their respective rotary kiln processes. The funding from the areas of advance is critical for research groups at Chalmers to enter pre-studies in areas such as this one, to be able to work without external funding up to half a year to support intial pre-studies, in this case to get the full attention form external funding bodies (EKRA, Energimyndigheten & Norska Forskningsrådet).
Area 3: The third area related to industrial combustion is work that also to an extent has been enabled by Energy area of advance funding (salaries). The work focuses on international work for emission control of power plants: coal-, co-, waste-, biomass-fired units in Scandinavia and the US. The work is currently conducted in the US (University of Utah and Brigham Young University) in two different pilot-scale units, in preparation for full-scale experiments (450 MWe unit, Hunter Power Plant), spring 2020. New diagnostic tools and control strategies are being developed to develop next generation Artificial intelligence-driven power plants; this to always apply best practice in terms of power plant process and emissions control. In autumn, HUST (Huazhong University of Technology) will be connected to this work; the scientific focus is on aerosol formation, in particular the primary stages. Aerosol formation
is a tremendous global challenge and poses a great threat to human health in China.
The persons involved includes prof. Klas Andersson, assoc. prof. Fredrik Normann, Dr. Thomas Ekvall and a new postdoc.