Co-firing of coal and biomass in oxy-fuel fluidized bed for CO₂ capture: a review of recent advances

The co-firing of coal and biomass in oxy-fuel fluidized beds is one of the most promising technologies for capturing CO₂. This technology has attracted wide attention from academia and industry in recent years as a negative emission method to capture CO₂ produced by carbon contained in biomass. In the past decades, many studies have been carried out regarding experiments and numerical simulations under oxy-fuel combustion conditions. This paper firstly briefly discusses the techno-economic viability of the biomass and coal co-firing with oxy-combustion and then presents a review of recent advancements involving experimental research and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations in this field. Experimental studies on mechanism research, such as thermogravimetric analysis and tube furnace experiments, and fluidized bed experiments based on oxy-fuel fluidized beds with different sizes as well as the main findings, are summarized as a part of this review. It has been recognized that CFD is a useful approach for understanding the behaviors of the co-firing of coal and biomass in oxy-fuel fluidized beds. We summarize a recent survey of published CFD research on oxy-fuel fluidized bed combustion, which categorized into Eulerian and Lagrangian methods. Finally, we discuss the challenges and interests for future research.