O2/CO2combustion technology is an effective method to capture and store coal-fired boiler flue gas CO2. With a 300MW subcritical pulverized coal boiler as the research subject investigated, Fluent numerical simulation software is used to simulate the process of pulverized coal combustion both in air and O2/CO2conditions. The comparative analyses are made both in the former conditions, such as the combustion characteristics of pulverized coal, the influence of oxygen volume fraction, the effect of the secondary air temperature on the temperature field in the furnace of pulverized coal boiler. As for the following results of the pulverized coal combusted in the O2/CO2condition, compared with the results in the air condition, its time of ignition is delayed, and the combustion temperature is low and the central position of flame rises. With the increasing percentage of the oxygen volume and the rising temperature of secondary air, the time of ignition speeds up, which improves the overall furnace temperature level and transferring capability of the radiation heat.

The influence of the moisture content on the ignition and combustion characteristics of lignite single particles was studied using an ignition model of single coal particles with moisture and experimental investigations in a visual drop tube furnace under the temperature of 1300 K. The moisture content and the lignite particle size were varied within the ranges of 0–20% and 75–250 μm, respectively. The images of the combustion process illustrated that higher moisture content caused a significant ignition delay. The probability of homogeneous ignition was greatest when the particle size was 125–150 μm and the moisture content was 5%. An ignition model was employed to explain the mechanism of the influence of moisture content on the ignition and combustion characteristics, which embedded the chemical percolation devolatilization model to increase the accuracy of predictions. The predicted results show that there was an overlap in the release of moisture and volatile matter from the lignite particle during the combustion at a high heating rate. The devolatilization rate increases with the increase of moisture, which explains the increase in the probability of homogeneous ignition and fragmentation. Both particle size and moisture content have two-sided effects on the ignition mode, which causes the complexity and irregularity of the ignition mode of particles with moisture.