Prediction of the burnout performance of some South American coals using a drop-tube furnace☆

An experimental investigation into the combustion burnout behaviour of some South American coals was carried out in a drop-tube furnace. The samples, in two size fractions, were initially pyrolysed at a temperature of 1300 °C, in a 1% of oxygen in nitrogen atmosphere for 200 ms. The re-firing of these pyrolysed chars was performed in the same apparatus, at the same temperature, during 400 ms, in an atmosphere containing 5% of oxygen in nitrogen. The coal samples used in this study were characterised by standard tests along with a specially developed image analysis technique (grey-scale histogram). Data of intrinsic reactivity, morphology, and burnout of the chars were correlated with maceral content of the feed coal by mean of linear regressions. In most cases, the results showed a poor correlation. Subsequently, when the rank of the coals was included in the regressions, the correlations remarkably improved in all cases. When further regressions of char properties with the grey-scale histogram of the coals were carried out, much better correlations were achieved. Therefore, the results indicate that the grey-scale histogram analysis provides a simple and objective technique to predict the combustion behaviour of these coals.