AUTHOR: Robert M. Davidson
DATE: February 1999
PAGES: 63
ABSTRACT:
This report is the third in a series examining the role for coal in generating
energy from waste. This report examines the experience gained in co firing wastes
with coal in commercial power plants, test facilities, and laboratory-scale
investigations. Individual chapters cover; availability, preparation, and feeding;
combustion; slagging, fouling, and corrosion; emissions and their control; ash
quality; and hybrid and parallel systems. There are two main attitudes to cofiring.
One regards coal as the problem, largely due to the quantities of carbon dioxide
produced and their enhancement for the greenhouse effect. Cofiring, especially
with 'CO2-neutral' biomass, is a way of displacing coal as a fuel and thus reducing
greenhouse gas emissions. The other attitude sees coal as the solution, largely
to the increasing problems of waste disposal. Here, the more stable combustion
characteristics and the lesser environmental impacts of coal are used to deal
with wastes that otherwise would be landfilled or, if incinerated alone, would
lead to more undesirable emissions to the atmosphere.