Combustion
The research activities in combustion address issues related to use of gaseous, liquid, and solid fuels, as well as pollutant formation and in-situ control of emissions. For gaseous, liquid, and solid fuels alike, our main objectives are to develop predictive tools for ignition, oxidation, and formation of harmful emissions.
The ignition and oxidation chemistry of gaseous and liquid fuels is particularly important for their use in engines and in certain industrial processes, as well as for hazard assessment. Pollutant formation is typically governed by the combustion process and can be controlled by primary measures.
Understanding of gas phase processes is obtained through laboratory and semi-industrial scale experiments combined with modeling efforts. Significant advances in the detailed understanding of fuel oxidation chemistry as well as N- and S-chemistry have allowed development of modeling tools that can be used for design purposes for a number of combustion and industrial processes.
Current research activities aim at developing reaction mechanisms for high-pressure oxidation of C1-C3 hydrocarbons and alcohols, formation of aerosols from gas-phase precursors (soot, alkali sulfate), and halogen, sulfur, and nitrogen chemistry.
Activities in solid fuel combustion are mainly addressing the challenges of using alternative fuels (biomass, waste) to replace fossil fuels in production of power and heat and in industrial processes.
The objective is to provide detailed knowledge on fuel characterization, ignition and flame stabilization, volatile oxidation, char burnout, and pollutant emission formation. A major effort is aimed at resolving the issues in replacing coal partly or fully with biomass on central power plants. This is the focus of the center GREEN that involves collaboration between several universities and industrial partners.
Other focus areas are related to cement production technologies and small scale biomass installations. The activities in solid fuel combustion are closely related to the research in inorganic chemistry and in gasification.
CHEC has a wide range of activities related to specific technologies of interest for the industry, i.e.:
- pulverized fuel combustion of coal and fuel mixtures
- grate combustion of biomass and waste
- oxyfuel combustion
- reforming
- engines
- production of liquid fuels
- chemical looping
- and technologies for flue gas cleaning.
We work experimentally from lab-scale over semi-industrial scale to full scale, using models extensively to analyze and extrapolate results.
To facilitate knowledge transfer to industry, the work involves simplified chemical sub-models for use in chemical engineering models and in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models.