From bubbling to circulating fluidized bed combustion-development and comparison

The most significant introduction of fluidized bed combustion technology took place about 50 years ago. Initially the combustion beds were of the bubbling type. Once the designs had reached commercial application, several drawbacks were discovered: Erosion on in-bed heat-exchanger tubes, insufficient combustion and desulphurization efficiencies with coal, unfavourable scale-up to electric utility-size. The problems were solved by applying circulating systems. The present text compares these bubbling and circulating designs. It is concluded that the bubbling bed may not be suitable for coal combustion, but for biomass and organic waste most of the drawbacks disappear, and the bubbling bed, being simpler, may have an economic advantage over CFB that should be considered. In addition, combinations of CFB and BFB are quite favourable in many applications.