Today we publish a new IFRF Members Research Report – IFRF Doc No F108/y/3 – which presents the observations and experimental data collected during the final experimental phase of the IFRF High Efficiency Combustion Project. This phase was concerned with Coke Oven Gas firing in counterpoint to the previously reported Natural Gas Experiments.

The report was prepared on behalf of the project team by Jonas Brobäck Adolfi, Connie Ellul, Ferry Frinking and Stanley Santos.  Jonas and Connie were supported by the European Commission through the IFRF Marie Curie training programme; Ferry is a member of CORUS RTD seconded to the IFRF for this experimental programme.  Stanley Santos was the Technical Manager for the programme.

In this phase, the 5m x 2m x 2m HEC furnace fitted with a pair of proprietary compact regenerative burners and was fired with Coke Oven Gas in a flameless combustion mode. The regenerative burners reversed at approximately 30-second intervals, and provided combustion air preheat levels of up to 1250C.

Input/output measurements and in-flame measurements were made at a range of throughputs between 300kW and 1MW. Measured parameters included gas temperatures, wall temperatures, gas compositions, NOx concentrations and radiative heat fluxes to the furnace walls. In addition, an extensive set of photographs and some video recordings of the flames were made. The approaches to measuring in flame parameters in a rapidly cycling combustion system developed in earlier phases of the HEC project were deployed. This has resulted in a consistent set of in-flame data for both COG and the aforementioned natural gas fuels.

Although primarily intended to generate data sets for the development and validation of mathematical models of the effect of fuel type on high temperature flameless combustion systems, a number of direct observations of the characteristics were made, and these are set out in the main text of this report.

In due course we shall prepare CDs containing full data sets within Excel workbooks and also present data on the IFRF Online Handbook.  This data are presently available in Appendices to F108/y/3, in pdf format, and includes the flame list, all input-output data sets, flame photographs and in-flame measurement data sets.

IFRF Individual Members may download the Research Report and Appendices, directly from the IFRF Members Research Project website at http://www.research.ifrf.net/research/document.html?did=25. It will be necessary for Members to authenticate themselves using their IFRF user name and password.

An overview, in the public domain, of the reports issued in the is programme may be viewed at:

  http://www.research.ifrf.net/research/programme.html?pid=8

This is the penultimate report in this series. The final summary report will be published in due course.