Spring Meeting in Cambridge: biomass power and carbon capture

British Section spring meeting, coinciding with an evening meal to celebrate the 75^th birthday of Allan Hayhurst.

  

Biomass Fuelled Power Generation with CO₂ Capture

Friday 24 May 2013

The Møller Centre, Cambridge

Click here for registration and full programme of speakers.

What is it about?

Biomass is a flexible resource, capable of conversion to heat, power and transport fuel energy vectors (as well as bio-materials). Biomass produced in the UK has the potential to provide 10% of UK Energy mix in 2050. Currently, on practical scales biomass co-firing has been implemented in several fossil-fired power plants. However, more effort in terms of realisation of large scale dedicated biomass combustion, gasification or pyrolysis plants is still required. Further, combined with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies, biomass conversion to heat and/or power could provide the UK with substantial net negative CO₂ emissions, with the potential to remove 50 to 100 MT of CO₂ from the atmosphere on an annual basis (depending on capture rates) and provide 80 to 120 TWhr of electricity annually.

The Conference

This conference focuses on the scientific developments and techno-economic issues related to realisation of biomass (both co-fired and dedicated) based power generation through combustion, gasification and pyrolysis, with or without the various pre-, post- and oxy-combustion CO₂ capture technologies.

This conference is suitable for industrial researchers, process engineers, technical managers, and the academic community interested in carbon-negative power generation. 

PhD in Robust Upscaling of Smouldering Processes at University of Strathclyde

A PhD studentship is available in Robust Upscaling of Smouldering Processes, with a specific focus on linking results from in situ smouldering remediation (Self-sustaining Treatment for Active Remediation or STAR) experiments in the laboratory (0.003 m^3) to field scale (3 m^3 to 300 m^3 and larger) activities. We are most interested in engineers, physicists, chemists and applied mathematicians with experience or at least a strong interest in combustion and fire sciences. This studentship is offered in partnership between the University of Strathclyde, the University of Edinburgh and the company SiREM.

Supervisor: Dr. Christine Switzer
Co-supervisors: Prof. Jose Torero, Dr. Guillermo Rein and Dr. Gavin Grant

The development of in situ smouldering combustion as a remediation technology (STAR) has emphasized small scale experimentation as a vehicle to understand the different processes involved and to optimize the relevant variables such as ignition protocol and flow rates. These tests have served as the basis under which larger scale tests have been conducted. Larger scale tests have been performed with overall success but with different levels of trial and error that has proven not only costly but having some negative effect in the overall performance. The optimized utilization of STAR in real sites needs to have a clear protocol that will help define the conditions that will best allow scaling-up of laboratory data.

Preliminary assessment of the viability of a site will always be done on the basis of small scale experiments. Definition of the details of the large scale implementation requires the inevitable scaling-up of the information obtained. This can be done via modelling but this requires a detailed understanding of the different phenomena involved. This understanding is currently not complete. An excellent source of information that can allow better understanding of the parameters differentiating small from large scale experiments is the thorough a posteriori assessment of the different large scale tests that have been conducted. While some assessment has been done, it has been mostly qualitative and it has never been directly correlated to small scale behaviour.

The proposal for this studentship is based on the need to develop the scale-up understanding from existing (and future) large scale experiments. The analysis of temperature/emissions/igniter/flow data together with the structure of excavation data will allow better understanding of the large scale tests. This information can be fed into existing (analytic and numerical) models to develop up-scaling tools. Furthermore, this information has to be linked to the wide database of small scale experimental data to try to establish an ideal protocol to use bench scale experimentation for the purpose of assessing site viability.

There is one studentship associated with this advertisement and this student will be based at the University of Strathclyde, UK. The studentship is open to individuals within the EEA only and provides a stipend of £13,590 per year. For further information, please contact Dr. Christine Switzer [mailto:christine.switzer@strath.ac.uk]

One-day meeting of the IOP on Combustion and NOx in the Environment, 21 April, Nottingham

Combustion and NOx in the Environment

(Formerly known as Low NOx Combustion)

21 April 2010, East Midlands Conference Centre, University of Nottingham, UK Organised by the IOP Combustion Group and the IOP Environmental Physics. This meeting is co-sponsor by the Combustion Institute British Section.

Nitrogen oxides are major pollutants from combustion and their emission is strictly regulated by law and technologically challenging to reduce. This meeting will focus on the fundamentals and practical aspects of low NOx technologies and will be of interest to academics and industrialists alike.

 

Programme

10:00 Registration and Coffee

Session 1 – Chair: to be confirmed

10:30 Professor R.P. Lindstedt (Imperial College)

Fundamentals of NOx Chemistry

11:10 Dr. Claire Holman (Peter Brett Associates)

Sources of NOx, trends and legislation

11:50 Professor David Fowler (Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Edinburgh)

Impacts of NOx in the Environment

12:30 – 13:30     Lunch

Session 2 Chair: Mike Welbourne (Welbourne Associates)

13:30 Professor Nick Collings (University of Cambridge)

Measurements of NOx

14:10 Professor Gordon Andrews (University of Leeds)

Transport and urban air pollution

15:50 – 15:10     Tea

15:10 Dr. K. Young (Rolls-Royce)

NOx from gas turbines (aero)

15:50 David Graham (E.ON)

NOx emissions from power generation (combined cycle gas turbines)

16:30 Close

Enquiries:
Dawn Stewart
Conference Organiser,
The Institute of Physics
76 Portland Place
London W1B 1NT
E-mail: dawn.stewart_AT_iop.org
Tel: +44 (0)20 7470 4910
Fax: +44 (0)20 7637 4266