Structure of Inorganic and Carbonaceous Particles Emitted from Heavy Oil Combustion

The combustion of heavy fuel oil for power generation is a great source of carbonaceous and inorganic particle emissions, even though the combustion technologies and their efficiency are improving. The information about the size distribution function of the particles originated by trace metals present into the fuels is not adequate. In this paper, we focused our attention on the larger distribution mode of both the carbonaceous and metallic particles. Isokinetic sampling was performed at the exhausts of two typical heavy oil flames by mean of an 8-stages Andersen impactor. Further investigation performed on the samples using electronic microscopy (SEM) coupled with X-ray analysis (EDX) evidenced the presence of full spherical particles, called “Pleosphere” (pleo-, solid in Greek) as correct analogy with cenosphere, with typical dimensions ranging between 200 nm and 2-3 micron, whose atomic composition contains a large amount of the trace metals present in the parent oils (Fe, V, Ni, etc). EDX analyses revealed that the metal concentration increases as the pleosphere dimension decreases.