University of North Dakota. Energy and Environmental Research Center.
Abstract
The Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC) is working with Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and a consortium of companies in partnership with the US Department of Energy (DOE) to perform the research necessary to determine the factors that cause hot-gas cleanup filters to be blinded by ash or to develop deposits that can bridge the filters and cause them to fail. The primary deliverable will be a graphics-driven computer model that can be used as an engineering tool to help predict ash-related hot-gas filter problems based on analyses of coal and sorbent, as well as system operating parameters. This paper presents preliminary testing data on determining the tensile strengths of coal ash particles at elevated temperatures and simulated combustor gas conditions. The range in temperatures for tensile testing is ambient to 900 C. The simulated gas atmosphere includes carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, sodium chloride, hydrochloric acid, and nitrogen. At present, all testing has been performed using ash from the Westinghouse advanced particle filter (APF) at the American Electric Power Service Corporation (AEP) Tidd pressurized fluidized-bed combustor (PFBC) demonstration plant in Ohio. Other sources of filter ashes, including several from non-American PFBC systems, will also be evaluated
