Spectrometer-Based Line-of-Sight Temperature Measurements during Alkali-Pulverized Coal Combustion in a Power Station Boiler

A portable spectrometer system that simultaneously measures the temperature, emissivity, and radiation intensity of an alkali metal was used in a 1000 MW coal-fired power plant boiler furnace. A calibrated fiber-optic spectrometer system was applied to obtain the radiation intensity of the flame. A simple method based on polynomial fitting was used to separate the continuous baseline from the measured flame spectra that contained both continuous and discontinuous bands. Nine synthetic spectra that included the baseline, noise, and three simulated discontinuous bands based on a Gaussian function were created to test the accuracy of the separation method. The accuracy of the estimated continuous baseline was evaluated by the goodness-of-fit coefficient quality metric. The results indicated good spectral matching for the selected profiles. The soot emissivity model by Hottel and Broughton was employed to calculate temperature and emissivity. The influence of discontinuous emission spectra on the temperature and emissivity calculations was evaluated. The results showed that the maximum difference of the measurement points of the calculated temperature was only 6 K and that the relative difference in emissivity among the measurement points was less than 5%. In addition, a comparison between the actual intensity of the alkali metal and the calculated temperature indicated that the change in the radiation intensity of the alkali metal followed the trend of the calculated temperature. This study serves as a preliminary investigation for measuring gas-phase alkali metal concentrations in a furnace