Grinding and combustion characteristics of woody biomass for co-

firing
with coal in pulverised coal boilers
Woody biomass is solid and needs to be ground for firing in pulverised
coal boiler furnace. In many cases, woody biomass is fed
together with coal into the existing coal mills without any modifications.
This way of utilisation can minimise the investment cost.
However, the mixing rate is limited depending on the margin of
mill load.

Since the heating value of

biomass is less than coal, more biomass must be fired in order to
achieve the same power output. Hence, the grinding capacity for
biomass must exceed that of coal

various mill types show different grinding characteristics depending

on the grinding mechanism. Most of pulverised coal fired
power plants employ vertical roller mills or ball mills. Vertical
roller mills are adopted recently on account of smaller energy consumption.
Therefore, the above-mentioned mills are automatically
applied to grind woody biomass although the suitability is
unknown.

The research on co-firing behaviours of woody biomass and pulverised

coal has been carried out by several researchers [610].
Tamura et al. [10] evaluated the co-firing characteristics of alternative
fuels with pulverised coal and also researched the coal blending
characteristics [11]. The following results were obtained. The
volatile release profile of woody biomass with pulverised coal
was additive and predictable while the char burnout behaviour
was non-additive

The selection of suitable co-firing methods and burner arrangement

is required. There are two ways of woody biomass firing with pulverised coal.

One is co-firing where wood powder and

pulverised coal are injected into the boiler furnace from the same
burner. In most cases, raw fuels are fed together into the mill
and ground fuels are transported together to the burner. This
method is called co-firing of mixed fuels hereafter. Another
way is in-furnace co-firing, which is established by individual firing
of woody biomass and pulverised coal. It can be expected that
the in-furnace co-firing is easier to achieve compared with co-firing
of mixed fuels, because coal and wood flames do not affect each
other directly in the boiler furnace.

On the other hand, in case-2 (wood

is fired in the lower part), high concentration of CO is existing in
the bottom area. However, it can be burnt completely before it
passes the boiler nose level. This result suggests that wood has
to be fired in the lower burner rows. Wood contains large amount
of volatile, and the burning is gas phase combustion. Therefore,
strong mixing with air may be required for quick burning. A large
amount of volatile burning easily leads to high CO concentration in
case of insufficient mixing.

From the experimental and CFD analyses, the following conclusions

are drawn:
(1) The vertical roller mill is most suitable for woody biomass
grinding in comparison with ball mill and vibration mill.
However, two type of mills not included in this study are
often used for woody biomass grinding, namely hammer
mill and cutter mill, which should be evaluated for the sake
of completeness.
(2) When the mill is modified such that the up-flow velocity is
increased by mounting an interior device, the vertical roller
mill can yield higher grinding rates than obtained for

bituminous coal. Load change is also possible with stable

primary air flow. Thus, the operational difficulty will be similar
to that of a conventional pulverised coal fired boiler.
(3) Wood powder produced by a vertical roller mill can be burnt
with conventional pulverised coal burner such as IHI-DF
burner. This allows more flexible design and operation with
higher co-firing ratio of woody biomass with coal. With and
without mill interior devices, the same vertical roller mill
can be used for woody biomass and coal.
(4) CFD results suggest that woody biomass must be burnt in
lower row burners to prevent CO emissions. The case of
50 cal.% co-firing shows more uniform furnace heat absorption
in comparison with pure coal firing