Emissions from Light Oil Fluidized Combustion: Preliminary Application of an Optical Technique

In the past, the combustion of conventional gaseous and liquid fuels in Fluidized Bed did not represent an attractive solution for power generation. The interest in reducing the emission of particulate in the atmosphere leads to consider again this technique since it is very efficient; moreover, this process is well known to produce less NOX, PAH and soot than the conventional one. In fact, steady combustion of liquids is feasible even at a lower temperature range than that commonly used for solid fuel in FBC. In spite of the advantages of this kind of combustion, several issues or problem remain to be solved like fuel atomization and injection, in-bed air/fuel mixing, micro-explosion, etc. This paper presents preliminary results on the formation of conventional pollutants (NOx, CO, etc.) and on the particulate emitted from a pilot fluidized bed fed with diesel oil. A particular interest was devoted to the emission of ultrafine particles (d < 10 nm) measured using light absorption in the u.v..