This week, the IFRF research team is carrying out an in-flame measurement campaign in Ponferrada (Spain) at the CIUDEN 20MWth Pulverised Coal boiler. These experiments represent the final phase of the Relcom project where a new concept of oxy coal burner was developed and will be tested in a 4x5MW burner configuration.
The task of the IFRF team is to characterize the flame and the combustion chamber environment and provide the data to the project partners to evaluate the burner performance. The characterisation will be done by measuring in-flame gas temperature and chemical composition at many points inside the boiler and the radiative and total heat flux at different points on the walls of the combustion chamber.

The members of the IFRF team in Ponferrada are Giovanni Coraggio, Marco Faleni – senior IFRF technician and two visiting students, Hans Gerrlings and Willem Broenink from the University of Twente in The Netherlands. They are undertaking  a two month placement at IFRF on the subject of “advanced in-flame measurements techniques” and will work with us until the end of November. Several further opportunities will occur in the coming months for organisations wishing to send engineers to IFRF to gain hands-on experience of in-flame measurement techniques and combustion test rig operation.

IFRF is also involved in the OnCord project that focuses on the diagnostic systems to evaluate the corrosion phenomena during biomass combustion. Within this project IFRF is organizing experimental tests with biomasses at 300 kWth scale and, in cooperation with the University of Pisa, will perform mathematical simulation of these tests to use the results as input of a model of fine particles formation in the combustion chamber.

At the end of September the EU Project BRISK (Biofuels Research Infrastructure for Sharing Knowledge) finished. IFRF participated in this 4 year project with a series of successful biomass characterization campaigns at the IPFR rig (Isothermal Plug Flow Reactor). The results of these tests along with prallele test undertaken on other furles and/or on other characterisation rigs will be uploaded in the next months into the IFRF Solid Fuel Database and will be available for IFRF members.