New Plasma Arc Furnace for Brown Coal Combustion

As it is well known coal is one of the main energy carriers by means of which electric and heat energy is produced in thermal power stations. The quality of the extracted coal decreases very rapidly. Therefore, the difficulties associated with its firing and complete combustion arise and thermo-chemical preparation of pulverized coal becomes necessary. Usually, other organic fuels (mazut – fuel oil or natural gas) are added to low quality coal for this purpose. The fraction of additional organic fuels varies within 35-40 % range. This decreases dramatically the economic efficiency of such systems. At the same time, emission of noxious substances in the environment increases. Because of all these, intense development of plasma combustion systems of pulverized coal takes place in whole world. In our paper we present development of new highly efficient plasma arc combustion system and first results of experiments on this system.