Measurements of Some Characteristics of Thermal Radiation in a 400-kW Grate-Fired Furnace Combusting Biomass

ABSTRACT

A comprehensive experimental investigation relevant to thermal radiation has been performed in a grate-fired test furnace. Thermal radiation is the dominating mode of heat transfer in the grate-fired furnace and yet only a few studies have focused on thermal radiation. No previous works, to the authors' knowledge, have been carried out concerning measurements on radiative heat transfer in grate-fired furnaces. In this work measurements of temperature have been carried out for all boundaries and the flue gases at a large number of locations. The gas species volume fraction, particle mass–size distributions, and wall irradiation have also been measured at a number of spatial locations. These data are useful in a computational framework to describe the radiative heat transfer reaching the boundaries. Comparing modeled wall irradiation to the measured one makes it possible to obtain a deeper insight into the thermal radiative transport inside the grate-fired furnace.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Henrik Hofgren

Henrik Hofgren received his M.Sc. (2007) in Energy Engineering, Umeå University. He received his Ph.D. in Heat Transfer, Department of Energy Sciences, Lund University, Sweden 2015. His field of research is radiative heat transfer in combustion environments, specifically the radiative property models of the participating media. His work covers both numerical and experimental work on radiative heat transfer in combustion environments. He now works as an R&D specialist at Babcock & Wilcox, Vølund a/s, Denmark.

Bengt Sundén

Bengt Sundén received his M.Sc. in mechanical engineering in 1973, Ph.D. in applied thermodynamics and fluid mechanics in 1979, and became Docent in applied thermodynamics and fluid mechanics in 1980, all from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. He has been a professor of heat transfer at Lund University, Lund, Sweden, since 1992 and Department Head of Energy Sciences, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, since 1995. His research activities include compact heat exchangers, enhancement of heat transfer, gas turbine heat transfer, combustion-related heat transfer, evaporation and condensation on micro- and nanostructured surfaces, nanofluids, liquid crystal thermography, microscale heat transfer, transport phenomena in fuel cells, computational modeling, and analysis of multiphysics and multiscale phenomena for fuel cells. He was an associate editor of ASME Journal of Heat Transfer 2005–2008, and has been editor-in-chief of the book series Developments in Heat Transfer (WIT Press, UK) since 1995. He has published more than 600 papers, edited 30 books, and authored three textbooks. He is a fellow of the ASME, and an honorary professor and guest professor at Chinese universities. He serves as regional editor for Journal of Enhanced Heat Transfer, as associate editor of Heat Transfer Research, and as associate editor of ASME Journal of Thermal Science, Engineering and Applications. He received the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award in 2011 and the ASME HTD 75th Anniversary Medal in 2013.

Lei Wang

Lei Wang is a docent in the Department of Energy Sciences at Lund University, Sweden. He received his Ph.D. in 2007 based on his experimental study of heat transfer and fluid flow in a ribbed channel. His current research interests include gas turbine cooling techniques, jet impingement heat transfer in crossflow, heat transfer enhancement in compact heat exchangers with nanofluids, and combustion-related heat transfer including thermal radiation. He has co-authored 40 papers in archival journals and conference proceedings.

Thomas Norman

Thomas Norman received his M.Sc. (1992) and Ph.D. (1997) from Denmark Technical University, Denmark. He has a Ph.D. in combustion, energy technology, and fluid mechanics. He is appointed as an external examiner for the mechanical engineering educations in Denmark and is a board member of DANSIS (the Danish Society for Industrial Fluid Dynamics). He has been department manager for 16 years, lately as department manager for research and development at Babcock & Wilcox Vølund a/s in Denmark. From 1997 to 2007 he worked at HARDI International a/s in Denmark as head of the Fluid Technology and Electronics Group. From 1993 to 1997 he worked on an industrial Ph.D. project in co-operation with the Energy Engineering Section at MEK, DTU, and KEW Industry A/S in Denmark.

Matthias Mandø

Matthias Mandø received his M.Sc. (2006) and Ph.D. (2009) from Aalborg University, Denmark. He is an associate professor in the Department of Energy Technology at Aalborg University. He teaches several undergraduate and graduate courses within the thermal fluid sciences and supervises numerous semester projects within the problem-based learning structure at Aalborg University. His research interests are in computational fluid dynamics, turbulence modeling, and combustion. He has published several papers in journals, books, and proceedings.