The use of fuel additives in wood and waste wood fired boilers to reduce corrosion and fouling problems

• One of the major drawbacks to the implementation of 100% biomass in conventional power station boilers is the increase in the fouling and corrosion of superheaters. Rapid corrosion of superheaters leads to increased maintenance costs while fouling caused by widespread deposit formation gives rise to a decrease in efficiency of the turbine and an increase in unplanned outages. The purpose of this paper is to report on the effects of fuel additives to change the biofuel chemistry, thus making the fuel less problematic and reducing corrosion and fouling problems. Full-scale trials have been carried out in 35MWth and 105 MWth combined heat and power stations. Most biomass fuels have a high content of alkali metals and sometimes high chlorine levels, but they contain very little sulphur compared to fossil fuels. It is thought that the addition of sulphur to the fuel could help to reduce corrosion since a deposit containing only alkali sulphates has a higher first melting point than deposits containing alkali chlorides. Molten phases increase the corrosion and fouling rates and in this sense, sulphates are preferred to chlorides in the deposits. To investigate the effect fuel additives, trials were initially performed in a 35 MWth wood-fired circulating fluidised bed boiler, adding controlled amounts of sulphur and a newly developed compound additive, called ChlorOut, to the 100% wood fuel feed or flue gases. It was found that the compound additive, ChlorOut, had a greater effect in removing KCl from the flue gases that pure sulphur, whilst having only a marginal effect on the SO2  content of the flue gas and sulphate content and pH of the flue gas condensate. Long term tests with ChlorOut were then repeated in a 105 MWth boiler and in addition corrosion probe testing of superheater steels was performed with and without ChlorOut. The results showed that the ChlorOut additive effectively reduced KCl levels in the flue gas at the superheaters, removed chlorides from the deposits, reduced fouling problems and reduced the corrosion rates by about 50%.

Ämnesord

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Materialteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Materials Engineering (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Kemiteknik -- Korrosionsteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Chemical Engineering -- Corrosion Engineering (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

superheaters

high temperature corrosion

corrosion

additive

biomass

combustion

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