The first Technical Meeting held under the IFRF’s European Flame Research Initiative (EFRI) took place at Doosan Babcock, Renfrew, Scotland, UK on June 16th 2010. The topic was ‘The Use of Oxygen on Combustion Test Rigs’. 24 individuals from 14 organisations participated, amongst which 6 organisations owning oxy-fuel test rigs.

The meeting took the form of a round table discussion on the practicalities of installing and operating oxygen on combustion test rigs, especially when combined with flue gas recycle.  Much of the discussion hinged around the particularly challenging task of testing oxy-coal-RFG flames, although gas and oil fuels were also covered.

At the start of the meeting, the participants established a list of topics and issues that they wished to discuss, based on an initial list proposed by the organisers. The discussions covered:

• Safety
• Recirculation vs once-through operation
• In-leakage
• Control of experiments
• In flame measurements, eg at 
  • very high temperatures 
  • very high water content
  • very high SOx
• Burners burning
• Downstream Corrosion
• Slow cycling
• Biomass – ‘in-fuel’ O2
• Bespoke Burners

The main points of the meeting and the actions arising from it are available for download as PPT files from the IFRF’s EFRI Forum.

Registered EFRI Members can download the PPTs direct from the forum.  IFRF Members not currently registered as users of the EFRI Forum may request a copy of the PPT files from Tracey Biller.

It was agreed by participants that this new style of meeting, focusing on combustion test rig operation and not at all on scientific results, was welcome and worthwhile.  A second Technical Meeting of this type will take place at Cardiff University’s Gas Turbine Research Centre (Wales, UK) on October 19th 2010 when the topic will be ‘High Pressure Combustion Test Rigs’. More details on this event can be found at the above link.

The IFRF is grateful to Doosan Babcock for hosting the EFRI meeting, and in particular to  Doosan’s Stuart Cameron who acted as meeting chairman. 

The next issue of MNM will feature an article on the CFD Workshop which also took place in Renfrew.