Development of empirical relations for predic...

Development of empirical relations for predicting fly ash resistivity for low sulphur content coals

Author Name : Syed Javid Ahmad Andrabi*, Avinash Chandra, Maqsood Ahmad Malik

ABSTRACT

Fly ash resistivity is one of the key parameters that influence the collection of ash particles from the flue gas stream in electrostatic precipitators. It is a basic input parameter used to design the electrostatic precipitator and also a critical parameter for determining the performance of electrostatic precipitators. This paper presents a new model to calculate fly ash resistivity based on its chemical composition for fly ash generated in Indian thermal power plants which have different chemical composition as compared to the western coals. The new developed correlations for calculating the electrical resistivity were verified through, experiments which were conducted for the measurements of electrical resistivity over a wide range of temperatures as per IEEE standards. Around 60 samples were obtained from different power plants in India for the resistivity measurements, whose chemical composition of each sample were determined. These empirical relations were developed for Indian coals which have less sulphur content and more ash content. These empirical relations provide better agreement with experimental values compared to those developed by Bickelhaupt and those developed earlier in the working range of operations of Indian ESPS.

Keywords: Fly ash resistivity; prediction of fly ash resistivity; particulate matter emission; coal-fired thermal power plant