Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199

www.elsevier.com/locate/enconman

Tests on co-ring of municipal solid waste and coal in

a circulating uidized bed
Changqing Dong *, Baosheng Jin, Zhaoping Zhong, Jixiang Lan
Education Ministry, Key Laboratory on Clean Coal Power Generation and Combustion Technology,
Thermoenergy Engineering Research Institute, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
Received 1 May 2001; accepted 7 September 2001

Abstract
Energy recovery from municipal solid waste (MSW) is a feasible method through various processes, such
as combustion, pyrolysis and gasication. Tests on the co-ring of MSW and coal were conducted in a 0.2
MWth circulating uidized bed, and the emissions of NO, N2 O, HCl and SO2 were studied. A three layer
feed forward neural network was constructed and trained by the BP method with experimental data. The
impacts of mixing ratio and bed temperature on the gaseous emissions were considered. The model pre-
dicted gaseous pollutions emissions were consistent with experimental data.
2002 Elsevier Science Ltd.
All rights reserved.

Keywords: Circulating uidized bed; Municipal solid waste; Feed forward neural networks

1. Introduction

The rising prices of raw materials and the energy crisis have resulted in an increasing concern
for material recovery and reuse from both management and technical aspects. On the other hand,
thermal treatment has been proven as an attractive method of waste disposal due to the primary
advantages of hygienic control, volume reduction and energy recovery. Fluidized bed combustion
allows clean and ecient combustion of various solid fuels. Several studies on the co-combustion
of fuel mixtures have shown that the blends of low rank coal and biomass can be successfully
combusted in a circulating uidized bed (CFB) and that increasing the proportion of biomass
improves the combustion eciency and the environmental impact [14]. Desroches-Ducarne and

*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-25-3794744; fax: +86-25-7714489.
E-mail addresses: cqdong@263.net, cqdong@sina.com (C. Dong).

0196-8904/02/$ - see front matter
2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 1 9 6 - 8 9 0 4 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 1 5 7 - 1
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Marty [5] have also revealed that the co-combustion of municipal solid waste (MSW) and coal
mixture in a CFB are feasible.
This study presents the results of co-combustion tests of MSW and coal in a 0.2 MWth CFB. A
three layer feed forward neural network (FFNN) was proposed to predict the gaseous pollutions
emissions, such as HCl, NO, N2 O and SO2 .

2. Experimental

2.1. Fuel and their composition

The MSW used in this experiment was collected in a living area of Nanjing (China). Its main
components were classied in 19 categories and ground to obtain a mean diameter of 5 mm. All
the categories were nally mixed to achieve a fuel with constant composition corresponding to
typical China MSW [6]. The coal used in this experiment was Xuzhou bituminous coal. The
properties of the fuels are given in Table 1 in the form of average values from several samples.

2.2. The circulating uidized bed

The tests were conducted in a 0.2 MWth CFB (shown in Fig. 1). The experimental system is
composed of a riser of 23 cm i.d. and 7 m height, fuel (MSW, coal) feeding systems, a line for y
ash and bed materials circulation and a fumes cooling and ltration system.
The CFB is preheated to the coal ignition temperature by a start-up burner. Coal is fed into the
bed by a screw feeder, and MSW is fed into the bed by a rotary feeder. The total combustion air is
divided into two streams: primary air is preheated to about 400 C and distributed at the bottom
of the bed; secondary air is injected through the airtight end of the MSW feeding path-way to
prevent MSW blocking the path-way. At the top of the riser, a cyclone allows the recovery of
entrained particles.

2.3. Analysis

The CFB is equipped for continuous measurement of temperature and pressure drops at dif-
ferent heights in the reactor. The major gas components of extractive samplings of the exhaust gas

Table 1
Coal and MSW properties
Proximate analysis (wt.%) Ultimate analysis (wt.% daf) Lower
Mois- Ash (dry Volatiles C H O N S Cl Ca Ca=S heating
ture matter) (daf) 0:5Cl value
(kJ/kg)
Xuzhou bi- 8.42 16.75 31.42 81.9 5.68 9.67 1.44 1.16 0.12 0.1 0.097 23 362
tuminous
coal
MSW 43.7 37.5 92.2 54.7 6.89 34.7 1.38 0.27 1 1.02 1.7 4197
 C. Dong et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199 2191

Fig. 1. The CFB combustor.

are analyzed by a multi-function ue gas analyzer. HCl in the ue gas is sampled and measured by
the silver nitrate volume method. Bottom ash and y ash samplings are taken for researching the
combustion eciency. All the tests were performed under the same condition: with excess air of 30
and 100 vol % of primary.

3. Results and disscusion

3.1. Combustion eciency

Fig. 2 shows the temperatures varying from the air distributor to the outlet of the CFB at
dierent mixing ratios. The temperature in the dilute region is about 100300 C higher than that
with only ring coal. It is due to the combustion of volatile matter in the dilute region. MSW has a

Fig. 2. Temperature draft vs relative height.

2192 C. Dong et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199

Fig. 3. Combustion eciency vs mixing ratio R.

higher volatile matter that dominates the processes of the MSW combustion. The carbon con-
sumption is faster during MSW added. Therefore, the concentration of char in the bed is lower,
and the eciency increases (as shown in Fig. 3).

3.2. Gaseous pollution emission

3.2.1. SO2 emission

As shown in Table 1, the sulfur contents mainly come from coal. SO2 emission is clearly lower
at high mixing ratio as shown in Fig. 4. The reason must be the high Ca and low sulfur contents in
MSW. Previous study results concerning coal or waste combustion have shown that a signicant
retention of sulfur can be obtained when sorbents are introduced into the CFB [7,8]. Other studies
have noted that calcium, potassium or sodium, which are present in relatively large amounts in
biomass fuel ashes, may also act as sorbents and be active for acid gas emissions reduction [9,10].
In a general bubbling uidized bed, the formation rate of SO2 increases with the temperature
increasing, but during the co-ring of MSW and coal in the CFB, SO2 emission remains constant
with temperature increasing (Fig. 5). The probable reason is attributed to the eects of higher
freeboard temperature and secondary air supply.

Fig. 4. The eect of mixing ratio on SO2 concentration in the ue gas at bed temperature 973 C.
 C. Dong et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199 2193

Fig. 5. The eect of bed temperature on SO2 concentration in the ue gas at mixing ratio R 4.

3.2.2. HCl emission

HCl may cause corrosion of the water-walls of the boiler through the following reactions:
Fe 2HCl ! FeCl2 H2
FeO 2HCl ! FeCl2 H2 O
Fe2 O3 2HCl CO ! FeO FeCl2 H2 O CO2
Fe3 O4 2HCl CO ! FeO FeCl2 H2 O CO2
and
2Cr2 O3 4Cl2 O2 ! 4CrOCl2
Cr2 O3 4HCl H2 ! 2CrCl2 3H2 O
NaCl and PVC may be the source of Cl during the MSW incineration. HCl can be formed
through the following reactions:
NaCl H2 O ! NaOH HCl
2NaCl H2 O SO2 ! Na2 SO3 2HCl
2NaCl H2 O SO3 ! Na2 SO3 2HCl
2NaCl H2 O SiO2 ! Na2 SiO3 2HCl
PVC ) L HCl R HC
Here L is condensable organic matter, R is solid char and HC is volatile organic matter. It can
be seen that the formation of HCl is promoted when Cl, S, H2 O and O2 co-exist. Fig. 6 shows that
HCl emission increases with the mixing ratio R increasing. The increasing of H2 O and Cl contents
in the fuel mixture causes it. The eect of temperature on HCl emission is not obvious (Fig. 7). It
must be that HCl has been formed under lower temperature. Therefore, the HCl emission con-
centration only increases slightly with temperature increasing.

3.3. Nitric and nitrous oxides

As shown in Figs. 8 and 9, when MSW is fed into the CFB, the NO and N2 O decrease abruptly.
The reasons are supposed to be
2194 C. Dong et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199

Fig. 6. The eect of mixing ratio on HCl concentration in the ue gas at bed temperature 973 C.

Fig. 7. The eect of bed temperature on HCl concentration in the ue gas at mixing ratio R 4.

Fig. 8. The eect of mixing ratio on NO in the ue gas at bed temperature 973 C.

the volatile products that surround the small MSW particles combust. The diusion of oxygen
to the surface of carbon is suppressed, and the reduction reactions that cause the decrease of
nitric and nitrous oxide are promoted,
 C. Dong et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199 2195

Fig. 9. The eect of mixing ratio on N2 O in the ue gas at bed temperature 973 C.

the nitrogen content in wood chip and rice husk is lower and volatile nitrogen is generally re-
leased as NHi compounds rather than HCN, leading to the formation of N2 O being sup-
pressed,
radicals like H and OH coming from combustion of biomass volatile matter reduce N2 O
through the following reactions:
N2 O H ! N2 OH
N2 O OH ! N2 HO2

MSW ash contains relatively some calcium, potassium and sodium, which have catalytic eects
on N2 O decomposition.

With the ratio of MSW to coal increasing, the N2 O increases slightly. It may be caused by the
lower location temperature zone that surrounds the particles.
Fig. 10 shows the eect of bed temperature on NO and N2 O emissions. NO increases, whereas
N2 O decreases with bed temperature increasing. According to the results of coal ring tests, it is

Fig. 10. The inuence of bed temperature on NO and N2 O emissions at R 4.

2196 C. Dong et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199

expected that high NO emission is due to the eect of higher temperature in the dilute region and
lower unburned carbon content in the furnace.

The temperature in the dilute region is much higher than that when only ring coal (as shown in
Fig. 3). It is the cause of the volatile content combusting in the dilute region. Higher temper-
ature promotes the reduction of N2 O and the oxidation of NO.
With the bed temperature increasing, the concentration of char in the furnace decreased. The
reduction reaction of nitric oxide on the char is suppressed.

3.4. Prediction of gaseous pollutant emission

Models that describe the combustion process during CFB incineration have already been
proposed to predict the impact of operating parameters on the gaseous pollutant emissions [11
13]. Desroches-Ducarne [5] also proposed a simplied prediction model for NO emissions during
the co-combustion of MSW and coal in a CFB. Because the composition of MSW is very com-
plicated, many elements may inuence the formation and destruction of gaseous pollutants, such
as operating parameters and the composition of the fuel mixture. The impacts of mixing ratio and
temperature are considered in this paper.
Neural networks have been used in many areas, such as automatic control, computer science
and chemistry [14]. In principal, a neural network has the power of a universal approximation
[15]. The main advantage of neural networks is the fact that they are able to use some a priori
unknown information hidden in the data. A three layer FFNN is constructed to predict the
gaseous pollutant emissions in this paper. As seen in Fig. 11, the neural network is composed of
an input layer, a hidden layer and an output layer. The mixing ratio R and temperature T are used
as input signals, and gaseous pollutants are used as output signals. Each neuron in a particular

Fig. 11. Feed forward neural network.

 C. Dong et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199 2197

layer is connected with all neurons in the next layer. The connection between the ith and jth
neurons is characterized by the weight coecient wij . The output value of xi is determined by
Eqs. (1) and (2). They hold that
xi f ni 1
X
ni wij xj 2

Here, ni is the potential of the ith neuron and function f ni is called the transfer function. It holds
that
1
f n 3
1 expn
The weight coecients wij are revised to minimize the sum of the squared dierences between
the computed and required output values. This is accomplished by minimization of the object
function E:
E 12x0  x0r 2 4
Here, x0 and x0r are the computed and required activities of the output neuron. A back propa-
gation training algorithm is used to vary the weight coecients. It holds that
 k
k1 k oE
wij wij  k 5
owij
Here, k is the learning rate. The training mode begins with random numbers of the weights and
proceeds iteratively. The crucial problem in the model selection is how to determine the numbers
of hidden units. There is no way to determine a good network topology just from the number of
inputs and outputs. It depends critically on the number of training cases, the amount of noise and
the complexity of the function or classication. The optimal number of hidden units is determined
by experiments in this paper.

Fig. 12. The prediction of SO2 emission.

2198 C. Dong et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199

Fig. 13. The prediction of HCl emission.

Fig. 14. The prediction of NO emission.

Fig. 15. The prediction of N2 O emission.

 C. Dong et al. / Energy Conversion and Management 43 (2002) 21892199 2199

When the hidden units are 7 and the learning rate is 0.9, the network converges faster. The
calculated results are showed in Figs. 1215. The impact of R and T on each gaseous pollutant can
be seen. The predicting results are consistent with the experimental data.

4. Conclusion

Combustion tests performed at dierent mixing ratios of MSW to coal show that the additions
of municipal refuses lead to

higher combustion eciencies due to the increased volatile content of the mixing fuel,
lower NO and SO2 emissions. On the other hand, HCl concentrations increase with the amount
of waste added,
N2 O emissions decrease rapidly when MSW is fed into the CFB. Increasing the ratio of MSW
to coal, the N2 O emissions increase slowly. When the fuel-mixing ratio remained constant,
NO emissions increase, SO2 and HCl remain constant, but N2 O decreases with temperature
increasing,
A FFNN model was proposed to predict gaseous pollutant emissions with variation of the mix-
ing ratio and bed temperature. The predicted results are consistent with experimental data.

Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by the foundation of Key Laboratory of Education Ministry
(China) and Key Science and Technology Project of Education Ministry (China). The support of
these organizations is gratefully acknowledged.

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