Experimental study on combustion characteristics in a rice husk fired vortex combustor

摘要

This paper presents the study of combustion characteristics of rice husk fuel in an annular vortex combustor (VC). The temperature distributions for selected locations inside the combustor and the fly ash and smoke from its flue gas were measured and observed respectively. Measurements were made by setting a constant mass flow rate of rice husk to be 0.2 kg/mm and by varying the equivalence ratio, Φ, to be 0.8, 1.0 and 1.2. To study the effect of feeding secondary air on flame stability, three values of the ratio of volumetric flow rates of the secondary air to the total air, (λ), were used and set to be 0.0, 0.2 and 0.4. The experiment shows the maximum temperature of about 1000°C in the upper chamber with less smoke of flue gas. Besides, emissions and the sizes of flyash particles from the exhaust stack can be controlled by the flow rate ratios of the secondary air to the total air, λ. The VC shows an excellent performance, low emissions, high stabilization and ease of operation in firing the fine rice husk.