Beneficiation of pulverized coal combustion fly ash in fluidised bed reactors

The paper addresses the thermal treatment of pulverized coal combustion fly ash belonging to the group C of Geldart powder classification in unconventional configurations of fluidised bed reactors. A sound-assisted fluidised bed combustor operated at 850 and 750 °C, and a fluidised bed combustor characterized by a conical geometry, operated at 850 °C, are the two lab-scale reactors tested. Combustion experiments have been carried out at different air excesses, ranging between 10% and 170%, and in the case of the conical fluidization column with different bed inventory. Both tested configurations have been proved to be efficient to reduce the carbon content initially present in the fly ash of 11%w, to a very low level, generally smaller than 1%w. Both the fly ash residence time in the reactor and the air excess strongly influenced the reactor performance. Residence times of 3-4 min and 10-60 min have been estimated for experiments carried out with the sound-assisted fluidised bed combustor and with the conical fluidised bed combustor, respectively. Regarding the possibility of a concurrent reduction of unburned carbon in the ash and of a particle size separation of the beneficiated material, on the basis of the obtained experimental data, the sound-assisted fluidised bed combustor is not able to separate the broad particle size distribution of the fly ash in different outlet solid streams. The use of a conical fluidised bed combustor is promising to realize an efficient separation of the inlet broad particle size distribution of the fly ash fed to the reactor into narrower outlet solid streams extracted from different locations: combustor exit, top and bottom of the bed. In this framework a hydrodynamic characterization of binary mixtures in a conical fluidised bed column carried out at ambient and high temperature (850 °C) has demonstrated that the operating conditions of the conical fluidised bed combustor can be chosen on the basis of a compromise between the requirements of a complete fluidization of the bed material and a high level of segregation of the finer particles present in the bed.