About State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion

State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion

The State Key Laboratory of Coal Combustion, known by the abbreviation SKLCC, is a national research laboratory at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, Hubei, located at 1037 Luoyu Road by the shore of East Lake. It is one of China's principal bases for fundamental research and technology development in combustion science and technology, and for the education and training of high-level specialists for the country's coal production, combustion and power generation industries. The laboratory's own overview dates its founding to May 1988, and records that in June 1991 it passed national acceptance and was officially opened to the outside world; Huazhong University's English introduction summarises the same history by saying the laboratory was founded in the late 1980s and accepted by the Chinese government in 1991. In March 1997 it successfully passed a national assessment of laboratories, and it has since carried a continuous programme of national, provincial and ministerial research projects.

Origins and national acceptance

The laboratory was created at a time when coal supplied the great majority of China's primary energy and when the efficiency and cleanliness of coal-fired power generation were central questions for national economic development. Its founding premise, as its own overview puts it, was that research topics should be based on the needs of national economic development and closely combined with China's national conditions and the key problems to be solved in the development of the national economy. That applied orientation has remained part of its identity: the laboratory describes itself not only as a scientific research base but also as an academic exchange and high-quality personnel training base. Since 1991 it has undertaken a series of projects under national programmes including the 973 Plan, national key projects and the 863 research programme, together with projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and major provincial and ministerial programmes, and its early record included provincial and ministerial science and technology progress awards and national invention patents.

Mission and objectives

The laboratory's stated mission is to advance knowledge for national energy development and environmental protection in the areas of coal and biomass combustion. Its objectives, as set out on Huazhong University's English pages, are to understand the fundamentals of combustion and conversion processes of fossil fuels, typically coal, and of green fuels such as biomass; to understand the mechanisms by which pollutants form during combustion processes and the control techniques needed for engineering application; and to develop innovative combustion technologies and equipment that achieve high efficiency and low emissions. This combination of fundamental and applied research and development in advanced, efficient and clean coal combustion technologies is the laboratory's defining remit, and it explains why its work spans laboratory-scale kinetics experiments, large boiler diagnostics and advanced power generation technology within a single institution.

Combustion fundamentals and kinetics

The first strand of the laboratory's research is the applied basic theory of coal combustion. Its researchers study the physical and chemical characteristics of solid fuels, coal pyrolysis and ignition characteristics, and the chemical reactions and kinetics that occur during solid fuel combustion and conversion. Understanding how a coal particle heats, releases volatiles, ignites and burns out is the foundation on which boiler design and pollutant control both rest, and the laboratory has pursued it through experimental characterisation of Chinese coals and through kinetic modelling. More recent work in this tradition includes studies of oxy-fuel combustion characteristics of typical Chinese coals, in which the different combustion atmosphere of oxygen and carbon dioxide, rather than air, is shown to affect combustion behaviour and pollutant emissions, and work on the ignition of coal in oxygen, carbon dioxide and steam atmospheres at different oxygen concentrations, investigated by combined experimental and numerical methods.

Modelling, simulation and diagnostics

A second strand is the mathematical modelling and numerical simulation of the coal combustion process, together with combustion diagnostics and control. The laboratory's listed research fields include modelling and simulation of flow, heat and mass transfer, reaction and conversion during solid fuel combustion and conversion, and the behaviour of multiphase turbulent reactive flows. On the applied side, its researchers have worked on the visualisation, optimisation and control of large-scale coal-fired boilers, and on boiler combustion diagnosis and optimisation expert systems for large coal-fired power plants. The laboratory is equipped with an array of advanced research facilities and instruments, among them particle image velocimetry, thermogravimetric analysis coupled with Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, and inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry, providing a full range of analytical and measurement capacities for coal combustion research and development. These diagnostic tools allow flame and flow behaviour measured in the laboratory to be connected to the computational models used to design and operate full-scale plant.

Pollutant formation and control

Pollution control is the third major strand, reflecting the environmental cost of coal combustion at China's scale. The laboratory studies the pollutant generation mechanism and its control during combustion, including the fundamentals of the formation and control of trace elements and particulate matter during coal combustion and conversion, and integrated control technology for multiple pollutants during fuel combustion and conversion. University summaries list desulphurisation, denitrification and other pollutant control technologies for the power generation industry among its fields. The logic of the programme is that pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulphur oxides, particulates and trace elements are formed by identifiable chemical and physical pathways inside the furnace, so that understanding those pathways at a fundamental level makes it possible to design combustion conditions and after-treatment systems that suppress them together rather than one at a time.

Advanced combustion and power generation technologies

The laboratory also develops advanced combustion and conversion technologies themselves. Its research directions have included high-efficiency, low-pollution fluidised bed combustion, including gas-solid flow characteristics and heat transfer in fluidised beds, key technologies of fluidised bed and supercritical boilers, and advanced power generation technologies more generally. In its later work the emphasis has broadened toward low-carbon combustion: Huazhong University researchers associated with the laboratory have edited and contributed to work on low-carbon combustion technology and engineering covering oxy-fuel combustion, ammonia and hydrogen combustion, co-combustion of coal with biomass, solid waste and sludge, pollutant emissions during low-carbon processes and novel burner technology. Research on flameless combustion of pulverised coal, including the nitrogen conversion mechanisms of the fuel and dynamic adaptive reaction mechanisms for its simulation, belongs to the same effort to make combustion cleaner without losing efficiency or stability.

Clean coal and international cooperation

The laboratory's international role is institutionalised in the International Joint Research Center for Clean Coal Utilization, which relies on the laboratory and was recognised by the Ministry of Science and Technology as one of the third batch of international joint research centres at a ceremony on 26 December 2012. The centre was jointly established by Huazhong University of Science and Technology with Curtin University in Australia, West Virginia University and the University of Utah in the United States, and in 2014 it passed the acceptance assessment organised by the Ministry of Science and Technology with excellent results. Its research follows two directions: the low-carbon utilisation of fossil energy, consolidating work on efficient combustion and conversion, deep joint removal of pollutants and carbon capture and storage; and the efficient conversion of low-carbon energy, including high-quality cascade utilisation of energy, energy materials, new energy and system integration. The laboratory is also the Chinese lead in the Sino-US Clean Coal Technology Alliance of the China-US Clean Energy Research Center, an alliance formed after the joint research centre was launched in November 2009, in which Huazhong University and West Virginia University lead their respective national teams on clean power generation, clean conversion, low-cost carbon capture and geological storage.

Earlier cooperation and openness

Cooperation of this kind is consistent with the laboratory's founding charter. Huazhong University records that the laboratory is open to national universities, institutions and industrial departments concerned with coal production, combustion and power generation, and that it has established extensive collaboration relations with international partners in the United States, Australia, France, the United Kingdom and Japan. In 2009 the laboratory signed a cooperation agreement with the Institute for Clean and Safe Energy at the University of Utah, and in 2011 Huazhong University and West Virginia University signed the agreement for the Chinese and American supporting units of the Clean Coal Technology Alliance. Openness is a formal principle of China's state key laboratory system, under which laboratories open their facilities and programmes to outside researchers, and in this laboratory's case it has given a Wuhan-based combustion group a durable place in international clean coal research networks.

People, training and role in Chinese combustion science

Training is the final strand of the laboratory's work. Huazhong University records that, by 2014, the laboratory had trained 32 postdoctoral research fellows and graduated 156 doctoral students and 723 master's students, and that at that time there were 12 postdoctoral research fellows, 119 doctoral candidates and 319 master's candidates working in the laboratory. Those figures are a dated snapshot rather than a current census, but they show the scale of the laboratory's educational function for China's power generation industry, to which it also provides technical training and professional development. Taken together — its 1988 founding and 1991 national opening, its combination of combustion kinetics, modelling, diagnostics and pollutant control, its fluidised bed and advanced power generation work, and its leadership of international clean coal cooperation — the laboratory's record explains the judgement in its own overview: that it is one of the highest-level research bases in China for the theory and technology of coal combustion, at a university whose energy and power engineering disciplines serve the industry that still underpins much of China's electricity supply.