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Abstract: To verify the feasibility of using radiocarbon detection for the measurement of the biomass-coal blending ratio in co-firing heat and power plants, ¹⁴C activity detection technology that uses benzene synthesis as the sample preparation method and a liquid scintillation counter as the detection instrument was studied. A benzene synthesis system was built to enrich carbon in the combustion flue gas in the form of benzene. The benzene sample was mixed with scintillator (butyl-PBD) and ¹⁴C activity was measured using a liquid scintillation counter (Quantulus 1220). Three kinds of coal and six kinds of biomass were tested repeatedly. The measured ¹⁴C activity was 0.3365 DPM/gC in Zhundong lignite, 0.2701 DPM/gC in Shenmu bitumite, and 0.3060 DPM/gC in Changzhi anthracite. These values were much higher than the instrument background activity. For the co-fired experiment, we used groups with biomass ratios (based on the carbon) of 6.51%, 12.95%, and 20.75%. A modified empirical expression to determine the biomass, coal blending ratio based on the ¹⁴C activity measured in the co-firing flue gas, was proposed by analyzing and verifying measurement accuracy. From the ¹⁴C measurements of the co-fired samples, the corresponding estimated biomass ratios were (5.54±0.48)%, (12.31±0.67)%, and (19.49±0.90)%. The absolute measurement error was around 1% for a typical biomass-coal co-firing application.

Biomass-coal co-firing is an effective way to reducing CO2 emission. However the shortage of accurate measurement of biogenic feedstock hurdles its development esp.in China. In this paper, authors investigated 14C approach testing the flue gas. The research has great significance in application which is beneficial to promote the co-firing development.

以¹⁴C法为基础的共燃烟气中生物质与煤的掺混比例测定方法

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