Coal-water Slurry Fuel - History

History

Toward the end of 1950s, the Soviet Union started the development of new ways to utilize coal sludge for power generation. Two major problems of sludge transportation and sludge combustion were solved during the series of experiments and research.

Ball mills pulverize and mix the coal sludge with water producing coal-water slurry (mix of liquids and hard particles). CWS produced by milling the sludge and/or regular coal near the coal mine near Belovo (Siberia, Russia) was transported through the pipeline to Novosibirsk (Siberia, Russia), a distance of 262 km. Three intermediate pump-stations were installed for pumping CWS to Novosibirskaya TEC-5 in Novosibirsk.

The unique difference of project Belovo-Novosibirsk uses CWS directly for combustion in steam boilers at a rate of 1340 t per hour. In other world projects CWS was used only for transportation which was followed then with drying of CWS before the combustion of the pulverized coal.

A project at Belovo-Novosibirsk was started in 1989 but delayed and finished in 1993 due to economic disruptions caused by the transition from the Soviet Union to Russia. A drop in oil and gas prices made the use of CWS coal combustion less economical.

Since the 2004 Russia has continued the development and implementation of CWS technology for heating stations (for district heating) and power stations.