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Abstract
Interactions of sodium, silica and sulphur in a lowrank coal during pyrolysis was investigated to understand the retention of sulphur by sodium and the role of sulphur in particle agglomeration and defluidisation in fluidizedbed combustion and gasification. Samples of water and acid washed coal, and the acidwashed coal ionexchanged with sodium acetate were prepared and subjected to temperatureprogrammed pyrolysis performed in a muffler furnace with a constant heating rate of 17.7℃/min up to 1000℃. Char samples were withdrawn from the reactor and subjected to sequential water and acid leaching tests and SEM analysis employing Energy Dispersive Xray and quantitative Xray mapping. It was revealed that for chars removed at temperatures between 700℃~1000℃, part of the organically bound sodium forms water soluble compounds such as Na2O and Na(OH), a significant proportion of water soluble sodium silicates and acid insoluble constituents with sulphur in the char. The latter explained why the presence of organically bound sodium was found to retain sulphur during pyrolysis in previous investigations and also why the formation of Na2S was not observed as the retaining mechanism. The highly concentrated regions of sulphur existing around the edges of the sodium silicate inclusion bodies were considered to be the beginning of the sticky phases of sulphur bearing compounds responsible for binding bed materials together during fluidisedbed combustion and gasification. Total sulphur retention was found to increase by 10% as the NaAc solution concentration used in the ionexchange of the acidwashedandNaexchanged coal was increased from 0.25mol/L (2% total Na) to 1.0mol/L (3.2% total Na). A corresponding increase in the acidinsoluble sodium content suggested that the amount of acidinsoluble sodium/sulphur constituents increases with acetate solution and is the reason behind the effect of total sulphur.
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