Monitoring Oxy-Coal Flame Stability

This paper presents a novel approach to monitoring the stability of oxy-coal flames. Oxy-coal combustion has the potential to generate high concentrations of carbon dioxide in the exhaust gas stream. This could increase the efficiency of the removal of carbon dioxide emissions from a coal fired utility boiler. In order to convert an existing boiler high levels of flue gas need to be recycled to reduce the combustion zone temperatures, but this can lead to combustion instability. This paper presents an approach using three broadband photo-diodes to monitor the infra-red, visible and ultra-violet emissions from an individual flame and then, by using the Wigner-Ville transform, detect unstable flames.