Field trip to the Doosan Babcock Testing facility – September 2015 Strathclyde Biannual

This blog was written by Khalida Al-Qayim who is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield and received funding to attend the Strathclyde Biannual from the UKCCSRC ECR meeting fund

A visit to the Doosan Babcock Testing facility was part of the UKCCSRC Biannual Meeting in Glasgow on Tuesday 8 September 2015.  The visit started with a brief introduction presentation on the company industrial projects, the collaboration with international firms in 38 countries including power generation, infrastructure, industrial vehicles and business R&D. the company currently combines 43,000 employees. This facility is part of the R&D activity investigating new technologies and providing customer services to Doosan Babcock partners in the power generation plant design, consultancy on high temperature combustion problems, development of carbon capture technology, and fuel characterization analysis. There are four testing laboratories in the facility, they are:

Metallurgy laboratory

Metal tubes and piping materials used in the boiler or super preheater in the power plants are tested in this lab. The high temperature oxidation conditions may lead to tubes failure at 585 oC when corrosion and erosion occur. The high technical equipment in the lab such as the laser scanning and the electro-microscope can identify the heat affected zones in the tested tubes. The lab also provides consultancy on the optimum tube material and design.

Emission Reduction Testing Facility

This lab combines a 60 kW pulverized fuel combustion rig connected to a carbon capture plant and flue gas analysis equipment to measure the resulting emissions from various types of solid fuels including biomass fuel. The rig also utilizes oxy-fuel technology to as an alternative technology to the carbon capture from power plants.

Clean Combustion Testing Facility

The largest single burner combustion chamber in the world is located in this facility with a power capacity of 75 MW. Coal and biomass fuels are tested with oxy-fuel and post-combustion carbon capture.

Fuel Chemical analysis laboratory

All types of solid and liquid fuels are tested in this lab. The full characterization analysis of wood pellets, toriffied wood pellets and coal is conducted by expert staff with various equipment such as CHN analyser, GC/MS, bomb calorimeter, and TGA. The lab receives samples from the same testing center or from external customers.

The visit was very useful as it introduced a large research facility to research students from many universities in the area and offered the opportunity to conduct their investigations in collaboration with Doosan Babcock expertise.