Particulate hot gas stream cleanup technical issues. Quarterly report, January--March 1996

To identify which ash characteristics can lead to problems with filtration, the authors have assembled 235 ash samples from eleven facilities involved in METC`s HGCU program. They have analyzed many of these ashes with a variety of laboratory tests. Physical attributes of the particles that they have examined include size distribution, specific surface area, particle morphology, and bulk ash cohesivity and permeability. They have also performed a range of chemical analyses on these ashes, as well as characterizations of agglomerates of ash removed from filter vessels at Tidd and Karhula. They are in the process of assembling the data obtained in these studies into an interactive data base which will help the manufacturers and operators of high-temperature barrier filters tailor their designs and operations to the specific characteristics of the ashes they are collecting. In order to understand the thermal and mechanical behavior of the various types of ceramic materials used in hot gas filtration, they have been performing hoop and axial tensile tests, thermal expansion, compression, and creep evaluations of these materials at temperatures up to 1,800 F. Nondestructive testing methods they perform on filter specimens include density and ultrasonic velocity. To date they have evaluated various characteristics of Dupont/Lanxide PRD-66, Dupont composite, 3M composite, IF and P Fibrosics, Refractron, Schumacher, and Blasch alumina mullite materials