Experimental study on the aerodynamic and separating characteristics of a novel tiny-oil ignition cyclone burner for down-fired utility boiler

A novel tiny-oil ignition cyclone burner is presented in this paper. Such a burner is an improvement and modification of the cyclone burner of the Foster Wheeler (FW) Company. In order to reduce the oil consumption during the start up and low load operation of the W-shaped flame pulverized coal-fired utility boiler, tiny-oil technology is introduced to the cyclone burner based on the design concept of staged ignition. This burner is employed in down-fired boiler, with the advantages of burning low volatile coal more efficiently and reducing the oil consumption. Experiments are carried out to investigate the aerodynamic characteristics and the coal particle separation efficiency of the novel tiny-oil ignition cyclone burner. The influence of the vent air damper opening on the performance of the cyclone is studied. The modifications and improvements on the novel tiny-oil ignition cyclone burner produce no unfavorable influence on performance of vent air ratio and the separating efficiency. This burner has been employed for a 300-MW down-fired pulverized coal utility boiler in China, and the oil consumption reduces by 70% compared with the technology of FW Company. Copyright © 2011 Curtin University of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.