ACERC
Abstracts - 1997 |
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Thrust
Area 7: Advanced Combustion Concepts
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A Decade of Combustion
Research
Smoot, L.D.
Prog. Energy Combust. Sci., 23:203-32 (1997). Funded in part by ACERC
The Advanced Combustion
Engineering Research Center (ACERC) at Brigham Young University and the University
of Utah, in cooperation with other universities, 37 industrial members, and
six governmental members, has marked a decade of combustion research. The review
emphasizes the contributions of ACERC over this past decade. While the state-of-the-art
relating to fossil fuel combustion is discussed, the paper does not treat the
substantial contributions of other researchers to recent advances in combustion
science and technology. The mission of ACERC has been to develop advanced combustion
technology through fundamental engineering and scientific research and educational
programs aimed at the solution of critical national combustion problems. These
programs have been designed to contribute to the Center's focus on the clean
and efficient use of fossil fuels and waste materials, particularly coal and
other low-quality fuels. The average annual ACERC budget over this decade has
been about $4 million, with about 40% form NSF (ERC), 25% from industry, 20%
from other federal and state grants, and 15% from participation universities.
ACERC has 38,000 square feet of administrative, computational and laboratory
space at the two universities. Research equipment exceeds a value of $16 million.
The team of about 140 researchers typically includes 30 faculty and professionals
from nine academic departments, 10 post-doctoral associates, and 100 students
at doctoral, masters and bachelor levels. Since ACERC was initiated in May of
1986, five books and over 700 journal and conference manuscripts have been publishes.
Basic experimental research has provided insights, parameters and submodels
toward development of comprehensive combustion models for industrial use. Eight
software products from ACERC have been licensed to industries. Six new companies
can trace their origins, in part, to ACERC. New NOX control concepts have been
developed under an advanced pulverized coal system development program of the
Department of Energy. New work in coal structure, coal reaction processes and
rates, methods of acid rain control, turbulent reacting flows, fuel minerals
behavior, and fuel and waste conversion processes has given new insights into
complex combustion processes, while new combustion modeling software products
for large furnaces, gasifiers and rotary kilns are being used by industry. ACERC
has also built a unique set of small, highly-instrumented, pilot-scale test-bed
facilities which allow industrial and academic researchers to characterize the
combustion of fuels and wastes in high-temperature furnaces, rotary kilns, fixed
beds, fluidized beds (both bubbling and circulating), stokers, and gasifiers.
Many of the Center's significant accomplishments can be categorized into five
areas: (1) comprehensive combustion model development, (2) combustion submodel
development, (3) pollutant emission, (4) air toxics, and (5) advanced combustion
system testing. This overview highlights selected research accomplishments of
ACERC during the past decade.
