Co-combustion performance of poultry wastes and natural gas in the advanced Swirling Fluidized Bed Combustor (SFBC)

Co-combustion of poultry wastes with natural gas in an advanced Swirling Fluidized Bed Combustor (SFBC) has been carried out to investigate the performance of poultry wastes combustion. Wastes burnt were poultry litter, poultry manure and sawdust. This paper presents the effect of three different wastes, excess air ratio, and secondary/total air ratio on the combustion characteristics. These characteristics include temperature distributions, carbon combustion efficiency, major gaseous pollutants emissions and heat recovery efficiency. The results indicate that, with the given moisture and ash contents in wastes, the excess air and the secondary air play important roles in achieving stable combustion. The carbon combustion efficiency could increase by 8-10% when the excess air is increased to 25% with the secondary air being at 20% and having a low injection height. However, the carbon combustion efficiency for the sawdust, which is 92% on average, is much higher than that of the poultry litter and manure, which is 81% and 76% on average, respectively. Differences regarding temperature distribution and pollutants emission were also observed with different combinations of the excess air, the secondary air and the secondary air injection height. The NOx emission was very low even though the materials contain high levels of nitrogen. In addition, the heat recovery efficiency aiming at the commercial use of the SFBC system for the farm industries was also evaluated.