Gas-particle turbulent flow of foursquare tangential jets in a simplified pulverized-coal firing boiler

An experimental cold-model of a simplified tangential firing boiler was established to investigate the mesoscale turbulent flow behaviors, including gas vortex structures, particle motions and interactions between two phases. A modified PIV technology, employing two pairs of lasers and cameras, was applied to measure the velocity and velocity gradient of turbulent flow in foursquare tangential jets alternatively. At a given initial gas velocity and particle mass loading, the interaction between gas and particles was studied at three different particle sizes. It was found that two main coherent vortex structures, circular eddy and hairpin eddy, distributed mainly in low speed area and heavy impingement area, respectively. The characteristics of particle motion in foursquare tangential jets correlated with gas turbulence dissipation, particle size, particle concentration and particle density. Small particles were easily entrained by gas vortex, so that they consumed more turbulence energy and attenuated the gas turbulence intensity. On the contrary, large particles had more inertia and led to heavier impingement in the chamber center, resulting in particle random distribution and complex momentum transfer between gas and particles. Moreover, large particles stretched the coherent vortex to be narrow and long, while small particles pulled down the vortices rotation intensity.