Improving the Flexibility of Coal-Fired Power Plants via a Pre-Gasification Burner with Ultra-Enhanced Flame Stability

Hanlin Zhang; Yixiang Shu; Xuebin Wang; Xu Zhou; Weicheng Li; Haiguo Zheng; Houzhang Tan

doi:10.1016/j.eng.2025.04.015

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Engineering ›› 2025 DOI: 10.1016/j.eng.2025.04.015

Improving the Flexibility of Coal-Fired Power Plants via a Pre-Gasification Burner with Ultra-Enhanced Flame Stability

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Abstract

To maintain power grid stability under the increasing integration of renewable energy, the operational flexibility of thermal power plants is assuming growing significance. Flame stability and responsiveness on the combustion side under the extreme conditions of ultra-low loads and rapid load-change processes are the key to increasing the flexibility of thermal power plants. In this paper, a burner based on pre-gasification combustion technology is developed. The flexibility of the pre-gasification burner on a 5-MW pilot platform is investigated through simulation and performance verification. The results indicate that a single pre-gasification burner can maintain flame stability under a 9% load when burning bituminous coal, and a fuel load variation rate of 10% min^–1 can be supported. The pre-gasification combustion has a faster stabilization rate compared with traditional combustion under coal flow and air flow disturbances. The application of pre-gasification burners in different classes of boiler is simulated, and the results indicate that the pre-gasification burner has the potential to improve the flexibility of industrial to full-scale coal-fired boilers.

Keywords

Flexibility of coal-fired power plant / Pre-gasification burner / Computational fluid dynamics / Dynamic response characteristics / Pilot test

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Hanlin Zhang, Yixiang Shu, Xuebin Wang, Xu Zhou, Weicheng Li, Haiguo Zheng, Houzhang Tan. Improving the Flexibility of Coal-Fired Power Plants via a Pre-Gasification Burner with Ultra-Enhanced Flame Stability. Engineering, 2025 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eng.2025.04.015

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