Mineralogy of clean coal combustion by-products

Coal combustion technologies are changing in order to bum coal more cleanly. Many "clean combustion" and postcombustion technologies are developed to remove SO₂ and NO_x gases, particulate matter during combustion, or from the flue gases leaving the furnace. This paper focuses on three types of fly ash (flue gas desulfurization (FGD) residuals, atmospheric fluidized bed combustion (AFBC) residuals and sorbent duct injection (SDI) residuals) which produced by "the clean combustion" and postcombustion technologies. The residuals formed by FGD are PCFA (pulverized coal fly ash) grains entrained with reacted and unreacted sorbent and have lower bulk densities than PCFA grains because it contains higher concentrations of calcium and sulfur, and lower concentrations of silicon, aluminum and iron than PCFAs. AFBC residuals consist of spent bed which is a heterogeneous mixture of coarse-grained bed material and irregularly shaped, unfused, spherical PCFAs. The main crystalline phases in AFBC residuals are anhydrite (reacted sorbent), quartz and lime (unreacted sobent), calcite, hematite, periclase, magnetite and feldspars.The residuals produced by SDI contained 65%-70% PCFA with the larger sizes material being irregularly shaped, fused or roughedged. The reaction products of sorbent (portlandite and lime) included calcium sulfate (anhydrite) and calcium sulfate. The chemical properties of these residuals are similar to those of high calcium PCFAs because of the high alkalinity and high pH of these residuals.