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Investigation of unburned carbon particles in fly ash by means of laser light

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Appl Phys B (2011) 102: 357–365
DOI 10.1007/s00340-010-4315-0
Investigation of unburned carbon particles in fly ash by means
of laser light scattering
R.Q. Iannone · R. Morlacchi · R. Calabria · P. Massoli
Received: 17 September 2010 / Revised version: 22 October 2010 / Published online: 20 November 2010
© Springer-Verlag 2010
Abstract A new optical method to determine the percent-
age of unburned carbon particles in fly ash from combustion
of pulverized coal has been developed. The technique ex-
ploits the different properties of particles of ash and coal in
the elastic scattering of polarized light.
The polarization measurements were performed using a
linearly polarized laser source and a receiving system able
to simultaneously detect the scattered radiation polarized in
parallel and orthogonal planes, under the scattering angle
of 60°. The parallel and perpendicular components of the
scattered light intensities are measured in order to determine
the polarization ratio. The operation of the system was tested
under various conditions using monodisperse glass spheres.
The performance of the novel device was assessed in several
sets of measurements with samples of fly ash produced from
coal fired power plants.
A correlation between the relative content of coal and
ashes and the polarization ratio of scattered light was
demonstrated. The resulting polarization ratio showed val-
ues ranging from 1.25 to 0.94 for a carbon content of
1.17 wt% and 16.3 wt%, respectively. The uncertainty on
the measured percentage of unburned carbon was about 1%.
The proposed device represents an attractive tool for
monitoring real-time burnout and combustion efficiency.
R.Q. Iannone () · R. Morlacchi
Loccioni, Environment R&D Lab., General Impianti srl,
via Monteschiavo 3, 60030 Moie di Maiolati (AN), Italy
e-mail: r.iannone@loccioni.com
Fax: +39-0731-814700
R. Calabria · P. Massoli
Istituto Motori, CNR, Via Marconi 8, 80125 Napoli, Italy
P. Massoli
e-mail: p.massoli@im.cnr.it
Fax: +39-0812-396097
1 Introduction
Driven by rising demand, record high prices for oil and nat-
ural gas, and concerns over energy security, emerging but
also industrialized countries will increase the use of coal.
According to forecasts of DOE/EIA (U.S. Department of
Energy/ Energy Information Administration), the world coal
consumption will grow by 49 percent from 2006 to 2030,
and coal’s share in world energy consumption will raise
from 27 percent in 2006 to 28 percent in 2030 [1]. The main
advantage of using coal in place of gas and oil is given es-
sentially by its relatively cheap cost and because the coal
reserves will last for 200 years, rather than 50 years for gas
and oil. On the other hand, it is worth noting that to con-
tinue to utilize coal, a significant effort is needed to utilize it
in a way to minimize its effects on the environment. Besides
dioxides of carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen, coal-based power
plants release considerable amounts of carbon monoxide in
the air as a result of incomplete combustion of coal. In addi-
tion to gaseous pollutants, another drawback is the suscep-
tibility of the ash and unburned coal particles to pollute the
environment. The fine particles, which remain suspended in
the effluent gases, once issued by the chimneys and released
into the atmosphere fall into the environment.
The ash content of coal represents the amount of mineral
matter which does not contribute to the combustion process
and, therefore, the amount of solid waste that remains after
the total combustion of organic compounds. The ash pro-
duced by burning pulverized coal is distinguished into bot-
tom ash, which is recovered from the bottom of coal burners,
and fly ash that is entrained in flue gases and escapes up the
chimney.
The ashes consist essentially of silicon, aluminum and
iron that are present in variable fractions depending on the
type of coal from which they come. The composition of the
358
ash is important because it will affect the operation of the
electrostatic separator, whose function is to trap solid parti-
cles suspended in the gas. If the size of the particles of ash
are small and therefore they are light, the force of attraction
is weak compared to the speed dictated by the gas, hence
the particles are not deflected enough to meet and remain at-
tached to the plate magnetized. The particles then continue
their course in the bed of gas transport and escape through
the chimney.
The main factors that influence the production rate of
combustion solid residues, besides coal properties, are the
operating conditions, such as particle size, temperature and
velocity of the combustion air, the nature of mixing solids
and gas, the design and spacing of the burners, and the
residence time of the combustible particles in the furnace
[2, 3]. The amount of unburned carbon in ash appears to
be a good sensor for analyzing the combustion efficiency
of coal blends. For this reason, the characterization of fly
ash particles represents an area that has received, over the
last several years, considerable attention from the scientific
community [4], driven by the idea to better understand the
combustion efficiency in boilers fired by coal. Usually, the
carbon content in fly ashes ranges between 2–15 wt% [5],
even if contents as high as 25 wt% have been observed [6].
Although the composition of fly ashes depends on the type
of coal, the amount of carbon can be related to the operating
conditions of the furnace. The presence of unburned carbon
is, in fact, a consequence of incomplete combustion of the
char which originates from the devolatilization of the coal
fed to the boiler. Therefore, the determination of the carbon
content within the fly ash can provide information on the
combustion process.
In addition, the physical and chemical properties of coal
fly ashes, their large quantity, and environmental aspects
have suggested their use in many industrial applications [7,
8]. Of particular interest is the use of the fly ash in the ce-
ment industry. The properties of fly ashes for use as a min-
eral admixture in concrete are covered by specific standards
[9, 10]. This guidance establishes the maximum allowable
content of unburned material for the use of fly ashes as
raw material for the construction industry. The admitted un-
burned carbon content is limited in the range of few percent.
Therefore, the monitoring of carbon content within fly ash
is relevant in order to meet the quality requirements. The
strategies to satisfy the maximum admitted concentration of
coal are essentially two. In the first, the coal is removed by
after treatment processes of the fly ashes based on thermal or
mechanical processes [11, 12]. The second strategy is based
on the concept that coal content is the result of an imperfect
combustion; thus, its concentration in fly ashes represents a
good marker of the overall combustion quality and, hence,
by monitoring it the combustion process can be controlled.
The conventional method used in coal combustion plant,
to determine the carbon content of fly ashes, requires
R.Q. Iannone et al.
the collection of fly ash samples followed by subsequent
analysis. The procedure is regulated by a specific standard
method [13]. The fly ashes removed from the flue gas of the
combustor exhaust by means of a particulate filter, need to
be dried and weighed. Afterward, they are placed in a fur-
nace for three hours at 850°C in order to oxidize all the car-
bon particles and finally are reweighed to find the percent of
carbon. The loss in weight is assumed to be due to the carbon
initially present in the sample. This approach takes the name
of loss on ignition (LOI). The main disadvantage of this par-
ticular technique is given mainly by the sampling collection
and the long time of analysis, which does not allow one to
obtain an on-line estimation of the unburned carbon content
and consequently of the combustion process. This results in
a delay of intervention in case the operating conditions of the
combustor are not optimized. In addition, the test is sensitive
to the several procedural details. The effects of cooling time,
cooling method, sample size, ignition duration, and ignition
temperature on LOI determination were evaluated in [14].
Real-time particle measurement techniques are therefore
needed. Several systems based on different physical princi-
ples have been developed for the on line or quasi on line
determination of the unburned coal content in fly ashes. Ex-
amples are devices based on photoacoustic absorption spec-
troscopy [15, 16], microwave absorption/resonance [17, 18],
capacitive method [19], infrared emission [20], optical re-
flectance and elastic light scattering [21–23].
Optical techniques are typically characterized by high
space and time resolution and also permit in situ measure-
ments. Light scattering methods have been largely applied
in the last decades to study and characterize of particles.
The major advantage is in the capability of determining si-
multaneously several unknown quantities like size, veloc-
ity, composition (i.e., refractive index), temperature, round-
ness, etc. [24–26]. Card and Jones carried out a series of
study concerning the characterization of coal and ash par-
ticles by means light scattering methods. The scattering in
the backward at ϑ = 160° was used to discriminate between
ash and coal particles [27], while a relationship was demon-
strated to exist between carbon content of particles and the
squared ratio of the intensities of crossed to parallel polar-
√
ization IVH /IHH [28].
The aim of this paper is to present the development of
an optical device based on laser light scattering able to de-
termine the carbon content within fly ashes. The working
principle is based on the measurements of the polarization
ratio, the ratio between the scattering intensities polarized in
the horizontal and vertical plane, which at a scattering angle
of 60° is a decreasing function of the carbon content of fly
ashes. A major advantage of this device is its ability to pro-
vide measurements in real time and in situ, thus supplying
prompt information about the particles of fly ash emitted by
coal combustion.
Investigation of unburned carbon particles in fly ash by means of laser light scattering
2 Theoretical background
Elastic light scattering is one of the most important method-
ologies worldwide applied in the characterization of bipha-
sic systems. Size, number concentration, velocity, and tem-
perature of particles are usually determined in laboratory
and industrial systems by measuring elastically scattered
light [25, 26].
The term scattering is typically referred to an instanta-
neous interaction between incident electromagnetic radia-
tion and a target that results in the redirection and possibly
a change in frequency (or energy) of the radiation [29–31].
It is possible to distinguish two kind of scattering according
to change of the frequency of the scattered radiation com-
pared to the source. An elastic scattering represents the case
where the interaction of the incident light with the substance
of interest leads to no change in frequency or photon energy.
On the contrary, the scattering is defined inelastic when the
scattered light has a frequency (or energy) different from the
incident light wave. The absorption is the process in which
the incident e.m. radiation is absorbed by the matter com-
posing the target and transformed in mechanical energy and
heat. Thus, the radiation energy is removed from the incident
wave due to the simultaneous and independent phenomena
of scattering and absorption. The radiation distribution after
the interaction depends on the properties of both the particle
and incident light beam.
The relation between the experimental measurements and
the unknown particle quantities is furnished by the scatter-
ing models. Mie theory is the exact model to describe the
interaction between spherical homogeneous particles and a
plane electromagnetic wave. Simplified approaches can be
used under particular scattering angles or particles proper-
ties. In forward, close to zero scattering angle, diffraction
theory can be applied to measure the size of particles inde-
pendently of their optical properties. However, this approach
suffers from a poor spatial resolution. The geometrical op-
tics approximation is largely used in the interpretation of the
scattering results due to its simple formulation and because
the physical meaning of effects are easily recognized. In this
approach, the phenomenon of elastic scattering is approxi-
mated as the sum of reflection and refraction. The scattered
light is thus obtained as a superposition of reflected and re-
fracted rays. Geometrical optics can be almost reliable in the
limit of scattering in forward and for particles considerably
larger than the wavelength of the incident radiation. When
particles are very small compared with the wavelength, the
Rayleigh scattering formulation can be used [24, 29, 30].
More sophisticated models have to be used for special ap-
plications due to both the incident light characteristics and
the properties of the particles [31].
Mie theory for scattering and absorption by spheres de-
pends on particle composition and the size parameter α =
359
2πr/λ where r is the particle radius and λ is the incident
wavelength. The parameter able to give an indication on the
composition of the particle is represented by the refractive
index expressed as m = n − ik, with n and k being the real
and imaginary part of the refractive index, respectively.
If all particles are assumed to be spherical and monodis-
perse over the measurement volume, the scattered light in-
tensity, Is of light of wavelength λ is given according to
Mie’s light scattering theory as [29]
I0 λ2 i(d, m, ϑ)N
Is = (1)
4π 2 l 2
where I0 is the intensity of incident light Is . The scattering
function, i, depends on the particle diameter (d), refractive
index (m) and angle (ϑ). The scattering angle ϑ indicates
the angle between the direction of the laser beam and the
direction of propagation of the light scattered by the parti-
cles. N and l are the particle number concentration and the
distance between the positions of light scattering and obser-
vation, respectively.
When the scattering concerns polarized radiation, the po-
larization ratio can be introduced. Physically it represents
the ratio of the efficiencies of the particle to diffuse light
for incident radiation of crossed polarization. Specifically,
it is given by the ratio of the scattered intensities IHH and
IVV , i.e., the scattered intensities measured in the horizontal
polarization plane when the incident radiation is horizon-
tally polarized and the scattering intensities measured in the
vertical polarization plane when the incident light source is
vertically polarized, respectively:
IHH
γ= . (2)
IVV
The terms horizontal and vertical are referred to the orien-
tation of the plane of oscillation of the electric field of the
radiation with respect to the scattering plane; this is defined
as the plane containing the incident beam and the receiving
optics for the measurements of the scattered light.
Having the possibility to record simultaneously scattered
signals in the planes of polarization orthogonal and parallel
also the depolarization ratio can be measured. For radiation
linearly polarized, the depolarization ratio is defined as the
ratio of the intensities scattered in the polarization transverse
and parallel to the polarization plane of the incident radia-
tion:
IVH
ρVH = (3)
IHH
and
IHV
ρHV = (4)
IVV
360
Fig. 1 Angular pattern of the polarization ratio for a 40 µm spherical
particle with increasing absorption. In the calculations the real part of
the refractive index were kept constant at n = 1.5 and λ = 532 nm,
respectively. The adimensional scattering parameter was x = 236.21
for incident radiation parallel and vertical polarized, respec-
tively.
The polarization ratio measured at proper scattering an-
gles can be a useful tool to determine the properties of par-
ticles. It was extensively used to characterize droplets in
sprays or to study the evolution of single droplets in high-
temperature environment [32–34]. In particular, for the ac-
tual investigation, it is useful to underline that at a scattering
angle of 60° the angular pattern of the scattered radiation
shows a marked sensitivity to the particle absorption. This
is qualified in Fig. 1, which shows the polarization ratio as a
function of the scattering angle for a particle of 40 µm with
increasing imaginary part of the refractive index. The pat-
terns were computed by using Mie theory [24] with a thin
angular step (dϑ = 0.01°) and by averaging the intensities
on a small angular aperture (ϑ = ±2.5°). The imaginary
part of the refractive index was varied between the cases of
transparent, k = 10−6 , and very absorbing, k = 10−1 , parti-
cles. The real part was fixed at n = 1.5 but the same general
features are observed for a large variation of n. The wave-
length was λ = 532 nm, thus the adimensional scattering
parameter was x = πd/λ = 236.21.
The picture shows the transition from a transparent
droplet to an absorbing one. It is evident as the marked de-
crease in the sideward and the disappearance of the primary
rainbow in the backscattering (it is represented by the min-
imum around 160°). This behavior can be well interpreted
by using the geometrical optics model of the scattering. In
this framework, the scattering in the sideward is due to both
refraction and reflection contributions with refraction dom-
inant on reflection for transparent droplets. The horizontal
component of the refracted light is typically higher than the
R.Q. Iannone et al.
vertical one, thus the polarization ratio IHH /IVV is over 1.
The rainbow is a pure refractive effect. It is due to the rays
internally reflected one time, i.e., two times refracted inside
the particle; it is dominated by the vertical component and,
hence, appears as a deep minimum in the polarization ratio
in the backscattering. The reflection is, instead, dominated
by the vertical component, which is always higher than the
horizontal one, which is characterized by a marked mini-
mum at the Brewster angle.
An increase in the absorption of the particle implies that
part of the radiation transmitted inside the particle is par-
tially absorbed by the matter composing the particle, thus re-
ducing the refraction component. The reflection components
are governed by the Fresnel coefficient; for the variation of
the refractive index under study they remain practically un-
varied. Thus, increasing the absorption means to shift the be-
havior of a particle from a regime dominated by refraction
to the one where reflection is the main effect. This corre-
sponds to the disappearance of the rainbow, which is a pure
refractive effect but also to the decrease of the polarization
ratio in forward. In fact, γ goes from a value higher than 1,
refraction regime, to a value close to 0 at the Brewster angle,
reflection regime. Identical features can be demonstrated for
particles with different values of the real part of the refrac-
tive index in the range 1.3–1.7, the main variations being due
solely to the different position of the Brewster angle and the
primary rainbow with n.
The particle diameter influences the behavior of the po-
larization ratio due to the consideration that the same refrac-
tive index will result in a different absorption of the radiation
travelling inside the particle also in dependence of the path
length. Thus, droplets composed by the same matter, i.e.,
the same refractive index will show a different absorption in
dependence of their diameters. Actually, the correct relation
between particle absorption and scattering pattern is not in
a separate indication of the particle diameter and the imagi-
nary part of the refractive index but in their product κ = kd,
the “optical thickness” of the particle. This is represented in
Fig. 2 where the polarization ratio was computed in func-
tion of the optical thickness of the particles at the scattering
angle of 60° where the sensitivity to the absorption is very
marked (Fig. 1). This behavior is relevant in the analysis
of particles characterized by different diameters and optical
properties [35].
3 Setup and procedures
The arrangement illustrated in Fig. 3 was built up for the
experimental determination of the polarization ratio of par-
ticles.
A diode-pumped solid-state laser emitting 50 mW at a
wavelength of 532 nm (Lasos Inc., GLK3250T01) is used as
Investigation of unburned carbon particles in fly ash by means of laser light scattering
the light source. The linear vertical polarization state of the
laser radiation is changed at 45° by passing the laser beam
through a λ/2 retardation plate rotated of 22.5°. The stability
of the laser power is controlled by monitoring the intensity
of the laser beam after crossing the test cell realized with a
quartz cylinder of 10 cm of diameter. The laser intensity was
measured with an InGaAs photodiode (Hamamatsu S1226-
44BQ7E).
The particles to be studied were injected from the top
of the cell using a sieve. The vibration of the sieve, ob-
tained by a peristaltic engine, ensured a good particle dis-
tribution in the cell measurement. The detection apparatus
consisted of two photomultipliers and common collection
optics mounted on a base which could be rotated around the
test space. The collecting optics is composed by two conver-
gent lenses of focal length 200 and 50 mm and a 600 µm pin-
hole in order to form a telescope able to collect the scattered
light and to prevent parasite light to enter the system. The
lens and aperture were mounted inside a black anodized tube
Fig. 2 Polarization ratio computed for spherical particles as function
of the optical thickness, κ = kd, at the scattering angle ϑ = 60°
Fig. 3 Experimental set up
361
to prevent reflected light from affecting the measurements.
The detection system was fixed to simultaneously measure
the two polarized scattered-light intensities at a scattering
angle ϑ = 60°. The angular aperture covered a scattering
angle ϑ = ±2.5°. The collected light is decomposed in or-
thogonal polarized components by a polarizing beam splitter
prism. The corresponding intensity components I and I⊥
are measured by two photomultipliers (Hamamatsu H9656).
To measure and analyze the signal, a 16-channel ana-
log input data acquisition unit (DAQ NPCI-6251) is used
to provide 16-bit simultaneous sampling. It is connected to
a PC with a connector block. The maximum sampling rate
is 1MS/s and the typical operating voltage range is 10 V.
A program designed with LabView (National Instrument)
was made for real-time data analysis and includes a peak
detection algorithm for particle detection and polarization
measurements. The peak detection algorithm scans the sig-
nal from the photomultipliers and searches for peaks in the
following way. A peak is considered valid if it has the fol-
lowing characteristics: the elements of a sequence of points
begins above a 0.05 V threshold limit, then exceeds it for
some time, and afterward returns to a value below 0.05 V.
The threshold limit is set in order to select only high peaks
that were generated by particles crossing the laser beam. The
peak-fining algorithm then performs a smoothing function to
the data points, and finally returns the amplitudes (intensi-
ties) of the peaks and the corresponding ratio. To determine
the polarization ratio, the peaks corresponding to the paral-
lel and perpendicular channels have to appear at the same
time.
The measured intensity components I and I⊥ represent
the sum of the scattering due to both polarized and depo-
larized light. In the experimental configuration depicted in
Fig. 3, they correspond to
I = IHH + IHV (5)
I⊥ = IVV + IVH (6)
362 R.Q. Iannone et al.

The crossed intensities, IHV and IVH , represent the fraction these measurements, the linear polarization ratio γ is deter-
of the incident polarized light that changes the polarization mined by
state due to the experimental apparatus and to the scattering  bg   bg 
process. γ = I − I / I⊥ − I⊥ (7)

bg bg
with I and I⊥ representing the background intensities
4 Water droplets and glass ballotini measurements measured when no particle is in the chamber, for the hor-
izontal and vertical component, respectively.
Figure 5a shows examples of the photomultiplier signals
Before measuring the scattering signals using fly ash, it was
of glass particles of 50 µm diameter, passing the area of the
appropriate to determine the response of the system. A series
measurement volume. When a particle passes through the
of preliminary experiments was performed.
test space, due to the Gaussian shape of the laser beam, the
Depolarization by perfectly spherical homogeneous drop-
PMT (Photo Multiplier Tubes) records a relative peak with a
lets is null. Thus, droplets were used to evaluate the general
quasi-Gaussian envelope characterized by a steep rising and
functionality of the experimental system and, in particular,
falling edges.
to quantify the instrumental depolarization (e.g., the depo-
larization due to the laser and optical alignment, cell test
quartz enclosure, optical components).
The analysis of depolarization was carried out by inject-
ing water droplets from the top of the chamber. A thin spray
was generated by a pressure atomizer. The polarization of
the incident laser beam was horizontal in order to measure
IVH and vertical to determine IHV , respectively. In this series
of tests, a Glan-Air prism was used to remove from the inci-
dent beam all the spurious components. The depolarization
values were both limited to less then 0.5%.
Monodisperse glass spheres of nominal diameter of
50 µm (Duke Scientific) were used in successive tests. A de-
polarization of about 0.1 was observed. This is possibly due
[23] to both some defects of the particles’ surface and to
small deviations from the spherical shape as can be seen
from Fig. 4.
The scattering components of the light diffused by the
glass ballotini in two orthogonal polarization planes is si-
multaneously collected at ϑ = 60° by a sole optics. From

Fig. 5 (a) Photomultiplier signal versus time recorded for glass

spheres of diameters of 50 µm; (b) series of measured polarization ra-
tios of 50 µm glass spheres; the mean value was found to be 1.40 with
Fig. 4 Microscope image of glass beads a standard deviation of 0.17. The averaging time was 1 s
Investigation of unburned carbon particles in fly ash by means of laser light scattering
Table 1 Main properties of the
glass beads Nominal diameter
50 µm
Fig. 6 Theoretical value of the polarization ratio at ϑ = 60° for glass
ballotini. It is also represented the band covered by the experimental
data
Each individual signal is superposed with noise. The am-
plitude of the noise is dependent mainly on the electronic
signal processing, particularly on the cut-off frequency of
any low-pass filters integrated. In addition, one should ob-
serve that variations in the scattered intensities for individ-
ual particles exist. Those variations depend mainly on the
Gaussian profile of the laser beam and the fact that the par-
ticles do not all fall through the same region of the beam.
This generates a distribution of amplitudes, which can limit
the accuracy of calibration.
Figure 5b shows the polarization ratio of glass ballotini
of 50 µm diameter obtained by the analysis of the signals,
like those shown in Fig. 5a. In Fig. 5b, a noticeable varia-
tion of the polarization ratio can be clearly observed. This is
due to the fact that the glass beads are not really monodis-
perse as reported in the particle data sheet and summarized
in Table 1.
In order to evaluate the influence of the size dispersion
on the expected values of the polarization ratio, a theoretical
computation based on Mie theory was carried out. Figure 6
reports the polarization ratio at ϑ = 60° for spherical parti-
cles as function of the particle diameters in the range of the
glass beads. The calculations were computed by averaging
363
Certified mean Size distribution Index of refraction
diameter std. dev & CV
49.9 µm ± 3 µm 2.2 µm (4.4%) 1.50–1.52
@ 589 nm, 25°C
the scattering intensities under the angular aperture of 2.5°.
The refractive index was m = 1.523 − i0.
The picture shows the oscillatory behavior of the polar-
ization ratio with values that vary with particle diameter
from 1.1 to 1.7. Given the high frequency with the diame-
ter of the oscillations, the polarization ratio value when av-
eraged on the diameter range of the ballotini is 1.385. After
the corrections for the background and for depolarization,
the averaged value of the polarization ratio experimentally
measured was 1.40 ± 0.17, in good agreement with the ex-
pected results. In Fig. 6 the band covered by the experimen-
tal data is also represented (the gray strip) for comparison
with the theoretical results.
5 Carbon content in fly ash
The measurements were performed on different samples of
fly-ashes produced in two different coal-fired power plants.
Figure 7 shows microscope images of the fly ashes particles
at different optical magnifications.
The ash particles appear white translucent with the ma-
jority of them of spherical shape. In the samples analyzed,
the size ranges from few microns to a maximum of 20 µm.
The char residual particles appear irregular in shape and
black; the diameters vary from few microns to 50 µm.
The ash particles were injected from the top of the cell
by means a sieve (Retsch, #5896851) that corresponds to
a mash of 100 µm. The ash samples were placed on the
sieve and by a mechanical vibration the particles freely fell
down along the cell. The vibration ensured a quite regular
feeding of particles. The sieve was very useful for discrim-
inating very large agglomerates, not representing particles
in practical systems but formed in the sample during the
stowage. In addition, the sieve permitted also a good parti-
cle distribution in the measurement region. The particle rain
was enough dilute in order to avoid multiple scattering. The
particle concentration was monitored by measuring the light
extinction: the transmission of the light beam through the
particles cloud was always over 0.98%.
The tests were carried out on fly-ash samples containing
different carbon concentration. As measured by the standard
method of loss on ignition, [C] varied in the samples from
1.17 wt% to 16.3 wt%. This range is large enough to cover
the typical operating conditions in a coal fired power plant.
For all samples were measured the polarization ratio γ and
364
Fig. 7 Optical microscope images of ash particles in the sample. In
the bottom, is shown the enlarged view of the bounded region in the
top image
the depolarization ratios ρHV and ρVH at the scattering an-
gle of 60°. The depolarization ratio ρHV oscillated around
0.5 with no evident trend with the carbon content; ρVH var-
ied between 0.51 and 0.45 with a fairly decreasing with the
carbon content. This is qualified in Fig. 8 where is shown
the ratio ρVH /ρHV measured for the different samples. On
the contrary, the polarization ratio γ corrected by the depo-
larization shows a marked decreasing with the carbon con-
centration (Fig. 9).
The trend was well fitted by a linear regression and the
equation of the best fit is also shown in Fig. 9. The indeter-
mination in the measure of the carbon concentration is 1.2%
in the worst cases (1.17 wt% and 16.3 wt%) and 0.85% in
average. Interesting enough, the intercept of the fit for null
carbon concentration is 1.27. This represents the value of
the polarization ratio at a scattering angle ϑ = 60° of a sam-
ple composed of only ash particles. By comparing this value
with the curves in Fig. 2 an optical thickness kd of about
0.02 can be inferred for ash particles. In the samples under
study the size of ash particles was in the range 1–20 µm.
R.Q. Iannone et al.
Fig. 8 The ratio ρVH /ρHV measured for the different ash samples at
ϑ = 60° in function of the carbon content in the samples
Fig. 9 The polarization ratio γ measured for the different ash samples
at ϑ = 60° in function of the carbon content in the samples
By coupling this value with the optical thickness, the imag-
inary part of ash particles is found varying between 10−2
and 10−3 , in good agreement with data from the literature
[36–38].
6 Conclusion
A light scattering device has been developed for the discrim-
ination of coal and fly ash. The system is compact and field
deployable and uses the technique of the polarization ra-
tio γ . The scattered light from the particles is collected at
an angle in the forward direction (60°) and the parallel and
perpendicular components are analyzed to calculate γ . The
results reported in this paper show the possibility to mea-
sure the carbon percentage within fly ash by exploiting the
different scattering properties of the particles. The theoreti-
Investigation of unburned carbon particles in fly ash by means of laser light scattering
cal study of the polarization ratio in the angular region 20°–
100° shows features completely opposite among carbon par-
ticles and fly ash. In our measurements, it has been, indeed,
demonstrated that there is a good correlation between the ra-
tio of the scattered intensities and the carbon content. In par-
ticular, a clear decrease of the polarization ratio is seen when
the carbon percentage rises within the fly ash. In addition,
the reproducibility of the proposed method is investigated
and the carbon content can be measured with an uncertainty
of about 1%.
The technique here presented is limited to the scattering
angle of 60°, but the system is prone to be implemented for
multi-angular scattering for the determination of the size of
ash and coal particles.
Acknowledgements We gratefully acknowledge the reviewers for
their careful reading of, and useful comments on the manuscript. We
would also like to thank ENEL for their support of this work, providing
their ash samples.
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