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Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Fuel
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fuel

The effect of air staged, co-combustion of pulverised coal and biomass blends
on NOx emissions and combustion efciency
S. Munir 1, W. Nimmo , B.M. Gibbs
Energy and Resources Research Institute, School of Process, Environmental and Materials Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 5 March 2010
Received in revised form 16 June 2010
Accepted 28 July 2010
Available online 11 August 2010
Keywords:
Co-ring
Air-staged
Un-staged
Biomass
Over-re air

a b s t r a c t
Co-ring of biomass residues with coal is continuously increasing in its application in coal-red boilers
for electricity production. In this study, co-ring experiments were performed using a Russian coal with a
range of biomasses, shea meal (SM), cotton stalk (CS), sugarcane bagasse (SBT), sugarcane bagasse (SBR)
and wood chips (WC) as biomasses in 5%, 10% and 15% thermal fractions to evaluate their potential as
substitute fuel and an agent for NOx control. It was found that the addition of biomass increased NO
reduction under both un-staged and air-staged conditions. However, NO reductions obtained under optimum conditions of primary zone stoichiometry (SR1 = 0.9) and over-re air (OFA) injection port location
3, were found to be signicantly higher than un-staged co-ring for the same biomass thermal share in
the fuel blend. It was found that the addition of biomass has a positive effect on carbon burnout under the
optimum conditions that were determined in the study. A 10% biomass blending ratio (BBR) was found to
be optimum for air-staging conditions. When co-red under optimum air-staged conditions, a 10% BBR of
sugarcane bagasse (SBR), shea meal (SM), wood chips (WC), cotton stalk (CS) and sugarcane bagasse (SBT)
in coal gave NO reduction of 49%, 51%, 53%, 60% and 72%, respectively.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The role of renewable fuels is continuously increasing due to
climate change and energy security threats. By April 2009, 78
countries had signed the statute of the International Renewable
Energy Agency (IRENA). Members include most countries of the
European Union and many developing countries, from Africa to
Asia-Pacic to Latin America, including Argentina, Chile, Ghana, India, Pakistan, Morocco, Philippines, Senegal, South Korea, and Tunisi. By early 2009, 73 countries have renewable energy policy
targets [1]. EU-25/EU-27 has a binding target of a 20% share of
renewables in the energy consumption by 2020 [2]. Despite the
increasing share of renewables in energy generation schemes,
new technologies are not yet competitive to combat climate
change [3]. In this scenario, co-ring biomass residues with coal
in traditional coal-red boilers for electricity production represents the most cost effective and efcient renewable energy and
climate change technology [46]. During the last 10 years, much
progress has been made in the utilization of biomass in coal-red
power stations. Existing biomass power generation (and cogeneration) capacity is about 52 GW [1]. Currently, over 234 units have
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 1133432513.
E-mail address: w.nimmo@leeds.ac.uk (W. Nimmo).
On leave from the Institute of Chemical Engineering and Technology, University
of the Punjab, Lahore, Pakistan.
1

0016-2361/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2010.07.052

the experience of co-ring biomass. A country-wise distribution

of these power plants is presented in Table 1.
Agricultural residues are a form of biomass that is renewable.
Despite their abundant availability, the current level of their utilization as a fuel is low [1,4,6,7]. Cotton stalk (Gossypium) is the stem
of cotton plant which is residual biomass material from cotton crop
and often burned in the eld as rotting vegetation may result in
damage to future crops due to disease, infestation, etc. [811].
The cotton stalk sample (CS) was obtained from agricultural eld
of Lodhran, Punjab, Pakistan; cultivated during MayJune season
and handpicked in NovemberDecember season. Sugarcane bagasse samples SBT and SBR were collected from known sugar cane
elds near Faisalabad and Rahim yar Khan, normally supplied to
Tandlianwala sugar mills and JDW sugar mills. Bagasse is the brous waste that remains after the recovery of sugar juice via
crushing and extraction. Shea meal (SM) is the residue from the
nut of the shea tree (Vitellaria paradoxa), after the removal of fatty
butter and contains the eshy mesocarp, shell and husk. This biomass material is currently used as fuel in the UK power generating
industry [8,9,12]. UK is importing 5420 tons of shea meal annually
from Africa for co-ring for electricity production [12]. Shea meal,
wood chips (WC) and coal (Russian coal) RC fuels for this study
were provided by (RWE npower) UK. In this context, the co-ring
potential of cotton stalk, sugar cane bagasse from Pakistan, shea
meal from Africa and wood chips has been evaluated for NOx emissions reduction under air-staging conguration.

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S. Munir et al. / Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

Table 1
Power plants with experience in co-ring combinations of biomass and fossil fuels.
Country
Australia
Austria
Belgium
Canada
Denmark
Finland
Germany
Indonesia
Italy
Netherland
Norway
Spain
Sweden
Taiwan
Thailand
UK
USA
Total

BFB

CFB

CFB,BFB

42

1
13

Grate
1

4
4
1

PF
8
1
1
7
7
10
4

Unknown

6
22

2
6
6

1
48

1
1
7
1
1
2
5
35

5
17

16
29
98

30

Total
8
5
1
7
12
81
27
2
7
6
1
2
15
1
1
18
40
234

Data source: [4].

2. Experimental
2.1. Experimental set up
The experimental furnace is a 20 kW down red combustor
(shown in Fig. 1). It is additionally equipped with three different
fuel feeders, air and gas supply systems, calibration set-up, gas
measuring analytical equipment, gas cylinder manifolds, water
cooled sample probes, char sample collection quenching system,
thermocouples, data logger and PC. The schematic diagram of the
combustor is given in Fig. 1.
For the biomass and coal co-ring tests, an arrangement of two
feeders could be utilised. While pre-blending coal with biomass,
the main feeder (Rospen) was used in conjunction with a smaller
(Dowson DB1-3/4) which permitted mixing of coal and biomass
on the spreader tray. Feeders were pre-calibrated before each test
run that were performed under un-staged and air-staged conditions. The coal and biomass were transported to the burner by
the primary combustion air ow. A part of the secondary air was
injected at a distance away from the burner to create a fuel lean
zone for the completion of combustion. The overall stoichiometry
was kept at 1.16 during the tests.
Gas samples were drawn through stainless steel probes from
any of the available ports along the length of the furnace. Axial distance measurements of the ports from the burner are given in Table 3. All the gas samples were dried and ltered before entering
individual on-line analysers. Instruments were calibrated before
each run with certicated BOC special gases mixtures. Oxygen
was measured using a Servomex Paramagnetic Analyser 570A;
CO, CO2 by NDIR analysers (Analytical Development Company;
ABB Easyline IR CO2 analyser); NO and NOx by a chemiluminescence analyser (Signal Ltd. series 440). Each gas analyser and Rtype sheathed thermocouples were connected through a data logging interface (Pdaq 56) and recorded directly to an Excel spreadsheet with a data sampling rate of 10 s using daq-view software.
In order that data for NO emission can be obtained at a particular plant condition, stable operation at that condition is achieved.
Stability is deemed to occur when the measured variables (mainly
O2 and NO) do not drift from a constant average level for a period
of up to 10 min. The data is logged every 10 s and post-run analysis
for the period of the test within the run involves extracting data
which has been averaged over 3040 sampled data points. Statistical analysis of example data is presented in Table 2 for the two

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of 20 kW furnace.

Table 2
Example statistics of data analysis method.

O2 mean
Standard deviation
NO mean
Standard deviation

5% SM + RC

15% SM + RC

3.2
0.05
541
4.02

3.3
0.03
479
3.2

Table 3
Axial distance of ports from burner.
Port no.

Distance from burner (cm)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Flue

56.5
86.5
116.5
146.5
161.5
191.5
221.5
236.5
259.5
299

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S. Munir et al. / Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

thermal fractions of 5% and 15% SM-coal blend under air-staged

conditions.
In order to compare the effects of air-staging and biomass addition, the test of RC ring without co-ring and air-staging while
keeping SR = 1.16 was taken as base line and NOx reduction (%)
was dened by equation:

NOred%

NObaseline @ 6% O2  NOBBR @ 6% O2
NObaseline @ 6% O2

 100

The base line value of NO was taken at the exit without the
addition of any biomass/staging. This was then corrected at 6%
O2. Similarly, all the NO values for coalbiomass blends (staged
and un-staged) were also corrected at 6% O2 to avoid any dilution
effect.
The proximate and ultimate analyses along with bulk densities
and HHV of the samples are given in Table 3. The caloric values
were determined by using a Parr 6200 oxygen bomb calorimeter.
For the determination of surface area, the char samples were analyzed using surface area and pore size analyzer Model (Quanta
Chrome Nova 2200e). Ash analysis was done using a PANalytical
Axios Advanced XRF spectrometer aided with PANalytical
IQ + Semiquantitative software.
The VM/FC of all the biomass samples was found to be 3.510.5
times higher than VM/FC of coal (Table 5). This is an indication of
signicant difference in volatility between the coal and the biomasses. Cellulose and lignin are generally recognized as main components in agricultural residues. The weight fraction, except for the
cellulose and lignin fraction, corresponds to the fraction of acidsoluble hydrocarbons in the biomass. Fig. 2 shows the differences
in the biomass samples structure. The cellulosic content in the biomasses may enhance the ignition characteristics since cellulose
compounds have the structure of branching chain of polysaccharides and no aromatic compounds, which are easily volatilized
[13].

stoichiometric air) is kept less than 1. A portion of the secondary

air (over-re air) is injected later in the furnace a creating fuel lean
zone to complete the combustion. The region downstream of the
over-re air ports is the burnout zone. The combustion in the fuel
rich, sub-stoichiometric primary region reduces the formation of
thermalNOx and fuelNOx [14]. Mixing of combustion air with
fuel in two stages by creating a fuel rich zone and fuel lean zone
delays the combustion process and is an effective means of NO
control in coal-red boilers [14,15].
The success of air the staged combustion technique primarily
depends on the location of OFA injection and the stoichiometric ratio in the primary combustion zone (SR1) [14]. To nd out the optimum OFA location along with optimum SR1, the furnace was
optimized with RC and RC-SM blend with 10% BBR. The overall
stoichiometric ratio at the furnace exit was kept at 1.16. Three stoichiometric ratios in the primary combustion zone, SR1 = 1, 0.9 and
0.8 were used along with each OFA port location from port 2 to
port 5 (Fig. 1). Fig. 3 shows the relationship among the OFA injection location, SR1 and NO reduction efciency.
This was found that a decrease in SR1 has a positive effect on the
NO reduction % for every OFA nozzle location. This was expected as
lower is the SR1, stronger is the reducing environment in the primary zone which is conducive for NOx reduction. The OFA nozzle
location determines the lengths of the primary zone and burn
out zone. A downward shift of the OFA nozzle location from port
2 increases the primary zone length and decreases the burn out
zone length and vice versa (Fig. 1). Figs. 3 and 4 revealed that maximum NO reduction levels were found at SR1 = 0.8 for all the OFA
nozzle locations with minimum carbon burnout. This was found
that for each step increase in the primary zone length (by moving

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Determination of optimum OFA injection location and SR1
The general principle of air staging is to create a distinct fuel
rich (oxygen decient) zone and a subsequent fuel lean zone inside
the furnace. The primary zone stoichiometric ratio (SR1, actual air/

Fig. 2. Structural composition of biomass samples.

Fig. 3. (a) Effect of SR1 and the location of OFA nozzle on NO with RC. (b) Effect of
SR1 and the location of OFA nozzle on NO with 10% SM-coal blend.

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S. Munir et al. / Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

Fig. 4. (a) Effect of OFA nozzle location and SR1 on the carbon burn out for RC. (b)
Effect of OFA nozzle location and SR1 on the carbon burn out for 10% SM-RC blend.

OFA nozzle from port 2 to 3 and 3 to 4 and so on) has a positive

effect on the NO reduction (Fig. 3) and negative effect on carbon

129

burn out (Fig. 4). This is due to the fact that each step increase in
the primary zone length increases the residence time in the oxygen
decient, fuel rich primary zone (Fig. 5a). This was in agreement
with the ndings of Ribeirete and Costa, 2009 [16].
A strong reducing environment in primary combustion zone restrain coal combustion, and large amount of unburned char enters
burn out zone [14]. If the length of the burn out zone is short and
temperature is not sufciently high, carbon burnout efciency can
drop. Figs. 3 and 4 showed that a decrease in the primary zone stoichiometry (SR1) has a positive effect on NO reduction and negative
effect on carbon burnout. This could be due to the fact that the
lower the fuel rich zone stoichiometry the stronger is the reducing
environment and longer residence time in the fuel rich zone
(Fig. 5b). Increasing the residence time in the fuel rich zone favours
the decomposition of N species (NO, NH3, HCN) resulting a significant reduction in NOx emissions. Decreasing SR1 can lead to an increase of reducing species formed in the primary combustion zone,
which is conducive to NOx destruction [17]. But at the same time
when SR1 is too low, pulverised coal combustion remains incomplete in the primary zone and large amounts of unburnt char enter
the burnout zone which may affect the combustion efciency.
There is a trade off between NO reduction and carbon burnout
while selecting an optimum OFA nozzle location and SR1. Therefore, too low or too high SR1 will result either low NO reduction
with high carbon burn out or high NO reduction with poor carbon
burnout at all OFA nozzle locations. Similarly, too short or too long
a residence time in the primary zone will result in either, higher
carbon burnout with low NO, or high NO reduction with low carbon burnout.
In Fig. 6, NO reduction and carbon burnout have been plotted.
From Fig. 6, an optimal position is estimated where the carbon
burnout begins to level off as SR1 increases. It is also clear from this
comparison that the addition of biomass benets both carbon
burnout and NO reduction at this condition. Keeping in view the
above discussion and results exhibited in Figs. 3, 4 and 6, an OFA
nozzle location at port 3 and SR1 = 0.9 were found to be optimum.

Fig. 5. (a) Effect OFA injection location on residence time. (b) Effect of primary zone stoichiometry on residence time. Air-staged conditions.

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S. Munir et al. / Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

Fig. 6. Effect of SR1 on carbon burnout of 10% BBR blends and NO reduction showing optimal condition at SR1 = 0.9 (OFA = port 3) (RC + SBT , RC + SM d, RC + CS j,
RC + WC N, RC + SBR ., RC H).

Fig. 7. Effect of BBR on NO reduction under un-staged co-ring conditions.

3.2. Co-combustion of biomass with coal

3.2.1. Co-ring
Three blends of each biomass and coal with 5%, 10% and 15%
BBR (thermal) were used in this study for un-staged and air-staged
tests. The furnace was operated at an overall stoichiometry (SR) of
1.16. It was found that an increase in BBR has positive effects on
NO reduction as shown in Fig. 7.
This could be linked to an increase in volatility of the fuel by the
addition of biomass. Tillman (2000) reported that an increase in
volatility (VM/FC) of fuel has positive effect on NOx reduction until
the volatility reaches unity. An increase in VM/FC beyond 1 has no
positive effect on the NOx reduction during co-ring [18]. A similar
effect observed while increasing the BBR for SBT from 10% to 15%.
As shown in Fig. 8 that an increase in BBR from 10% to 15% raised
VM/FC level from 0.98 to 1.15 resulting a decrease in NO reduction
from 21% to 18%.

It is evident from Table 4 that SBT, having signicantly higher

fuel nitrogen content than WC, SBR and CS, gave considerably higher NO reduction than WC, SBR and CS when co-red. The results
showed in Fig. 7 are in agreement with the ndings of Spliethoff
and Hein, 1998 that a correlation of the NO emissions and the
nitrogen content of the biomass are not likely [7,19].
3.2.2. Air-staged co-combustion of biomasses with coal
The NO levels and corresponding NO reductions have been plotted in Fig. 9 for various primary zone stoichiometry (SR1) levels. It
was found that while co-ring coalbiomass blends, a decrease in
primary zone stoichiometry (SR1) showed a more positive effect on
the NO reduction compared to coal alone for the same level of SR1.
As SR1 = 0.9 and OFA location at port 3 were found to be optimum
operating parameters, the results plotted in Fig. 9 corresponds to
OFA location port 3. The NO reduction was found to be 42% in
the case of RC staged ring with SR1 = 0.9. All the coalbiomass

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S. Munir et al. / Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

Fig. 8. (a) Effect of BBR on volatility under un-staged co-ring conditions. (b) Effect of volatility on NO reduction under un-staged co-ring conditions.

Table 4
Proximate and ultimate analysis and HHV of the fuel samples.
Fuels as received basis

SM
CS
RC
WC
SBT
SBr
a

Ultimate analysis

Proximate analysis

C (%)

H (%)

Oa (%)

N (%)

S (%)

Ash (%)

FC (%)

VM (%)

H2O (%)

41.70
45.2
60.36
42.2
33.6
42.34

5.0
4.40
4.5
4.94
5.3
5.62

32.32
40.5
8.35
35.48
36.27
37.13

2.47
1.0
1.84
0.28
1.5
0.24

0.09
0.0
0.30
0.10
0.0
0.001

4.29
4.9
14
1.70
11.05
9.56

24.58
18
45.48
11.90
13.86
17.11

57
73.1
29.87
71.1
62.81
68.23

14.13
4.0
10.65
15.3
12.28
5.1

Bulk density
(kg/m3)

HHV (MJ/kg)

490
310
620
270
160
180

17.70
17.70
27.29
16.39
11.80
17.37

Calculated by difference.

Table 5
Volatility and particle size of the samples.
Fuels

VM/FC

Particle volume mean diameter [4,3] (lm)

SM
CS
WC
SBT
SBR
RC

2.32
4.06
5.97
4.53
3.99
0.656

150.29
209.89
586.25
743.11
586
85.292

blends exhibited higher NO reduction compared to coal alone for

SR1 = 0.9 (Fig. 9). A 10% BBR was found to be optimum for coalbiomass blends (Figs. 9 and 10) under the conditions studied. A comparison of the air staged experiments for maximum NO reduction
with remarkable air-staging investigations by other researchers is
given in Table 6.
For optimum 10% BBR (thermal), NO reductions were found to
be 72%, 60%, 53%, 51% and 49% for SBT, CS, WC, SM and SBR, respectively. The difference in the % NO reduction for bagasse samples
(SBT and SBR) could be linked to the difference in their proximate
and ultimate constituents (Table 4) and volatility (Fig. 8a and Table 5). During combustion, fuel bound nitrogen reacts with the released volatiles from fuel and generally tends to form HCN and NHi.
These intermediate components subsequently react to form NOx in
an oxidizing environment and N2 in a reducing environment
[15,2022]. The formation of HCN and NHi,(1,2,3), depends on the
hydrocarbon release during fragmentation. The volatile matter in

the biomasses is higher than coal (Tables 4 and 5) and the volatiles
from biomass devolatilization are mainly the combustibles CO,
H2, CxHy [6]. The addition of biomass to replace coal increases
the volatility of the fuel. The dominant volatile-nitrogen compound
in coal combustion is HCN and in biomass combustion is NH3. The
ratio of HCN to NH3 is 0.9 in coal combustion and 0.1 in wood combustion [23]. The formation of NH3 and HCN increases with
increasing fuel volatility [24] and gas-phase combustion becomes
predominant [18]. Furthermore, most of the fuel nitrogen in biomass is initially converted ammonia and subsequently by reaction
to NHi radicals during combustion. The N species reduces NO to
molecular nitrogen (essentially providing an in situ thermal DeNOx
source) [6,19,25,26]. The mechanistic pathways for formation and
reduction of nitrogen oxides during air-staged coal combustion
were described by Beer (2000). Bai (2000) described mechanism
of wood chips combustion. The reactions involved in two staged
biomass combustion has been described by Nussbaumer (2003)
[20,21,27]. In the light of above elucidated referred work, possible
routes for the NO reduction in near burner reducing zone during
two staged biomass coal co-combustion are shown in Fig. 10.
Therefore, the synergistic effect of the addition of biomass to
control NOx under staged conditions becomes apparent. As biomasses contain less carbon and are highly oxygenated compared
to coal (Table 4), the amount of theoretical air required for combustion is less than coal combustion, alone. It is anticipated that
the addition of biomass without increasing SR1 level can cause locally stronger reducing environments within the ame in the primary zone resulting in a negative effect on carbon burnout and

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132

S. Munir et al. / Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

Fig. 9. Effect of SR1 and BBR on NO, OFA port 3, air-staged conditions.

NO emissions. The wider range of biomass particle combustion

rates related to size and higher volatility may modify the combustion pattern compared with a normal coal ame so that volatile-N
from coal may enter the ame after rapid consumption of O2 by
more reactive biomass combustion [7]. The CO concentrations
measured in primary zone for different biomass-coal blends are
shown in Fig. 12. This could explain why, that in the case of 15%
BBR, some of the biomass-coal blends showed lower NO reduction
and carbon burnouts than 10% BBR blends of the same biomasses
(Figs. 10 and 12). In order to compare the effect of biomass addition on burn out, un-staged coal ring burnout was taken as base
line (Fig. 13a) for un-staged co-ring tests for same SR = 1.16. To
compare the effect of biomass addition under air-staged conditions, burnout of staged coal ring for SR1 = 0.9 was taken as base
line (Fig. 13b). In both the cases, burnout improved with an increased biomass share. This was in agreement with the ndings
of Spliethoff and Hein (1998) [19]. It is clear that the addition of
biomass has a positive effect on carbon burnout (except WC
Fig. 13). This could be linked to the higher volatility of biomasses
(Table 5), higher reactivity and porosity of the biomass chars as
compared to coal [19,23,2833]. The char surface area of the biomasses were found to be 21.712, 5.44, 4.832, 4.549 and
3.958 m2/g for SBT, SBR, WC, SM and CS compared to 0.128 m2/g
of RC. In the case of WC, the bulk density to particle size relation
could be a limiting factor. WC and SBR have the same particle size
and the density of WC is considerably higher than SBR (Tables 4
and 5). Furthermore, the cellulose to lignin ratio of WC was found
to be 0.8 compared to SBR of 5.86 (Fig. 2). The axial temperature
proles of the biomass-coal blends co-combustion for SR1 = 0.9
and OFA injection location port 3 are shown in Fig. 13. A temperature difference of 75120 C was observed in the primary zone for
RC1-WC blend (Fig. 14). This could be due to higher particle size,
density and moisture content (Tables 4 and 5) causing a delay on
the ignition of WC permitting the coal to ignite ahead of the WC
preferentially consuming O2 in the near burner zone resulting lower burnout (Fig. 13).
A maximum of 21% NO reduction was found in the case of 10%
SBT-coal un-staged co-ring (Fig. 7). When co-red under optimum

Fig. 10. Possible routes for NOx reduction during co-combustion of biomass with coal in the primary zone.

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S. Munir et al. / Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

Table 6
A comparison of the air staged experiments conducted for this study and other researchers.
Primary fuel

Secondary fuel

Reactor type

Un-staged NO
(ppm) for 6%
O2 in the
primary zone

Initial primary
zone
stoichiometric
ratio (SR1)

Primary zone
stoichiometric
ratio range
(SR1)

Primary zone
residence
time (s)

Maximum NO
reduction efciency
at primary zone
stoichiometric
ratio (SR1)

References

Bituminous
Russian coal
90% RC
90% RC
90% RC
90% RC
85% RC
Hard coal

N/A

20 kW pulverised fuel
combustor
-do-do-do-do-do0.5 MW pulverised fuel
combustor
-do-do-do-do-do-do1.5 MW under stoker furnace
100 kW laboratory furnace

854

1.16

0.81.2

1.17

67% (0.80)

This study

811
828
794
673
769
1384

1.16
1.16
1.16
1.16
1.16
12

0.81.2
0.81.2
0.81.2
0.81.2
0.81.2
0.61.2

1.25
1.29
1.20
1.21
1.16
0.9

67% (0.8)
73% (0.8)
54% (0.8)
76% (0.8)
71% (0.8)
38% (0.6)

This
This
This
This
This
[19]

1160
1575
935
1450
1225
1775
631
458

12
12
12
12
12
12
12
1.15

0.771.2
0.551.2
0.65120
0.551.2
0.521.2
0.612
0.412
0.81.15

0.9
2.5
0.9
2.5
2.5
2.5
0.5
0.3

30% (0.88)
77% (0.7)
39% (0.82)
81% (0.70)
76% (0.60)
79% (0.60)
50% (0.70)
80% (0.80)

[19]
[19]
[19]
[19]
[19]
[19]
[21]
[16]

Hard coal
Hard coal
Hard coal
Hard coal
Hard coal
Hard coal
UF chipboard
Bituminous
Russian coal

10%
10%
10%
10%
15%
N/A

SM
CS
WC
SBT
SBR

10%
10%
40%
25%
40%
NA
N/A
N/A

straw
straw
straw
straw
straw

study
study
study
study
study

Fig. 12. Effect of BBR on CO concentration in the primary zone, SR1 = 0.9, air-staged
conditions. (RC1 + WC N, RC1 + SBT , RC1 + SM d, RC1 + CS j, RC1 + SBR
.).
Fig. 11. Effect of BBR on NO, OFA port 3, SR1 = 0.9, air-staged conditions.

air-staged conditions, a 10% BBR of sugarcane bagasse (SBR), shea

meal (SM), wood chips (WC), cotton stalk (CS) and sugarcane bagasse (SBT) in coal gave NO reduction of 49%, 51%, 53%, 60% and
72%, respectively. It seems that in the case of un-staged experiments, fuel volatility played positive role in NO reduction. In the
case of air-staged co-ring experiments, operating parameters like
primary zone stoichiometry (SR1), OFA injection port location and
temperature exploited the NOx formation kinetics signicantly. It
was found that the air-staging technique has a synergistic effect
on biomass-coal co-ring for NOx reductions (Figs. 9 and 11) and
carbon burnout (Fig. 13). It was found that NO emissions decrease
as the distance between staged air injector and burner increase because of an increase in the residence time of the particles in the
primary zone. However, if the distance exceeds from 116.5 cm
(OFA injection location port 3) (Table 3), carbon burnout decreases
signicantly (Figs. 4 and 5). A reduction in primary zone stoichiom-

etry was found to cause a decrease in both NO emissions and carbon burnout (Figs. 4, 6 and 9). This was in agreement with the
ndings of Ribeirete and Costa (2009), Li et al. (2009) and Spliethoff and Hein (1998) [14,16,19].
4. Slagging and fouling
Inorganic constituents in the fuel are the main contributor to
slagging and fouling [25,34]. The major elements including alkali
metals (K, Na), alkaline earth metals (Ca, Mg), silicon, chlorine
and sulphur are involved in reactions leading to ash slagging and
fouling [34,35]. Biomasses have lower ash content compared to
coal (Table 4). At the same time, biomass ash materials are rich
in alkali and alkaline earth metals [7] and these are effective uxes
for alumina-silicates and lower the ash fusion temperature resulting an increase in slagging and fouling propensity [31]. Despite the
lower ash fraction in biomass, co-ring of biomass with coal can

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134

S. Munir et al. / Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

Fig. 14. Temperature proles of coal and coalbiomass blends, SR1 = 0.9, air-staged
conditions.

Fig. 13. (a) Effect of BBR on burnout with SR = 1.16 (un-staged co-combustion). (b)
Effect of BBR on burnout with SR1 = 0.9, OFA port 3, air-staged conditions.

lead to an enhanced slagging and fouling propensity due to its lower fusion temperature depending on chemical and mineralogical
composition of y ash as well as on conditions (temperature and
velocity distribution, reducing or oxidizing atmosphere and many
others) in the furnace [35]. The ash chemical composition (from
air staged co-combustion experiments) for 10% optimum BBR is
shown in Table 7.
Ash chemical composition of the coalbiomass blends with 10%
BBR does not differ signicantly from the pure coal ash (Table 7).
This was in agreement with the ndings of Pronobis (2005) and
Grammelis et al. (2006) [35,36]. Pronobis (2005) concluded that

the chemical composition of the biomass-coal blends ash does

not differ signicantly from the pure coal ash provided BBR (thermal) remains less than 20% [35]. Gramelis et al. (2006) are of the
view point that biomass exploitation as secondary fuel in co-combustion processes is technically and economically feasible up to
20% w/w and the produced ash could be further utilised without
any major treatment [36]. Therefore, the traditional correlations
for the coal ash can be used as predictors for slagging and fouling
tendency of ashes from fuel mixtures with 10% BBR. Traditional
slagging and fouling indices are given in Table 8.

Table 8
Traditional slagging and fouling indices.a.
Slagging (basic 10
acidic compounds
ratio) Index

Table 7
Air staged (SR1 = 0.9) co-red ash composition for 10% BBR of different blends.

Components
(%)

RC

RC + SM

RC + CS

RC + WC

RC + SBT

RC + SBR

Na2O
MgO
A12O3
SiO2
p2o5
K2O
CaO
TiO2
Fe2O3
SO3
Othersa

0.35
1.386
23.07
63.35
0.444
2.18
1.5
0.995
5.75
0.058

0.32
1.68
21.57
60.98
0.7
2.5
2.69
0.9
6.78
0.223

0.36
1.7
22.77
59.9
0.58
2.83
2.27
0.965
5.6
0.06

0.36
1.36
22.98
63.27
0.49
2.28
1.55
0.998
5.74
0.06

0.44
1.83
22.66
61.73
0.5
2.38
2.25
0.95
5.66
0.079

0.33
1.36
21.1
62.36
0.51
2.86
2.39
0.92
5.9
0.089

Include V2O5, Cr2O3, SrO, ZrO2, BaO, Mn3O4, NiO, CuO, ZnO, PbO, HfO2.

Simplied B/A
Slagging (Babcock)index

Fouling index

Ratio slag viscosity

index

Source: [35,37,38].

B/A < 0.5, low slagging

inclination
05 < B/A < 1.0, medium
B/A = 1.00, high
B/A P 1.7S, severe


O3 CaOMgO
0.75 < R(B/A) low
RB=A Fe2SiO
2 Al2 O3
slagging
Rs < 0.6. low slagging
Rs AB  Sd
inclination
Sd % of S on dry basis
Rs = 0.62.0, medium
Rs = 2.02.6, high
Rs > 2.6. extremely high


B
Fu 6 .6, low fouling
F u A  Na2 O K2 O
inclination
Fu = 0.640, high
Fu P 40, extremely
high


SiO2
SR > 72, low slagging
SR SiO2 MgOCaOFe

100
2 O3
inclination
72 P SR > 65, medium
SR 6 65, high
B
A

Fe2 O3 CaONa2 OK2 OMgO

SiO2 Al2 O3 TiO2

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S. Munir et al. / Fuel 90 (2011) 126135

Table 9
Calculated values of the traditional ash deposition indices.
Index

SBt

SBR

CS

SM

WC

RC

Rb
B/A
B/A(+P)
R(B/A)
RS
Fu
SR

12.56
0.1472
0.153
0.115
0.039
0.415
86.37

12.84
0.1522
0.158
0.116
0.043
0.485
86.60

12.76
0.15.26
0.1595
0.116
0.043
0.487
86.22

13.97
0.1674
0.176
0.135
0.051
0.472
88

11.29
0.1294
0.135
0.1
0.039
0.342
87.97

10.56
0.1202
0.1255
0.0931
0.0409
0.2977
88.74

Rb represents the percentage of basic constituents in the ash.

The minimum ash softening temperature occurs with
35% < Rb < 55%. Although the inuence of P2O5 on ash fusibility depends on the form in which it occurs in the y ash, it seems appropriate to add P2O5 content to the B group in B/A index. The new
ratio is called B/A(+P) [35,37]. The calculated values of the traditional ash deposition indices for optimum air staged (SR1 = 0.9),
10% BBR compared to un-staged RC (SR = 1.16) are given in Table 9.
The values of the slagging and fouling (S&F) indices for coal
biomass blends with 10% BBR were found to be in the ranges
attributed for low slagging and fouling inclination (Tables 8 and
9). It was also noticed that S&F indices for coalbiomass blends
with 10% BBR are in proximity with pure coal indices (Table 9).
5. Conclusions
Five world biomass samples were co-red under un-staged and
air-staged congurations in a 20 kW down-red coal combustor to
investigate their (biomasses) potential as substitute fuel and an
agent to control NOx. Biomasses were pre-blended with coal in
5%, 10% and 15% thermal fractions. An increase in biomass blending ratio (BBR) showed an increase in fuel volatility and increase
in NO reduction. A maximum of 21% NO reduction was obtained
with coal-SBT co-ring blend. In air-staging experiments, primary
zone stoichiometry (SR1) was varied from 0.8 to 1.16 for each of
the OFA injection port location from port 2 to 5. It was found that
a decrease in primary zone stoichiometry (SR1) and an increase in
residence time, by varying OFA port location in the primary zone,
both have a positive effect on NO reduction for coal and coalbiomass blends co-ring. A 10% BBR was found to be optimum with
respect to NO reduction and corresponding carbon burnouts under
air-staged conditions. The investigated biomass-coal blends exhibited signicantly higher NO reductions under air-staged conditions
compared to un-staged co-ring for the same BBR. NO reductions
between 49% and 72% were obtained under optimum air-staged
conditions of SR1 = 0.9, OFA injection location = port 3 and
BBR = 10% (thermal) compared to 1.421% NO reductions under
un-staged co-ring. It was found that the air-staging technique
has a synergistic effect on biomass-coal co-ring for NOx reductions and carbon burnout. The addition of biomass as secondary
fuel up to 10% BBR (thermal) in co-combustion was found to have
no adverse effect on slagging and fouling propensity.
Acknowledgement
The authors wish to express their gratitude to Dr John Smart
(RWE npower) for providing the shea meal, wood chips and Russian coal samples for this study.
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