Gaseous products, air flow rates, and temperatures are displayed and recorded with a computer-based data acquisition system. The laboratory also includes apparatus developed at ISU for on-line monitoring of carbon in fly ash suspended in flue gas. The laboratory in Sweeney Hall houses two, cold-flow models of circulating fluidized beds used in similitude studies. The smaller unit is 2 inches in dia. A variety of pressure and flow transducers are connected to a computer-based data acquisition system to collect hydrodynamic data on the units.
Software supports spectral analysis of time-series data generated in experiments.
The laboratory also includes apparatus developed at ISU for off-line measurement of carbon in bulk samples of fly ash. The laboratory at the ISU Physical Plant is actually a self-contained, portable instrumentation cabinent used to conduct experiments on the circulating fluidized bed boilers that provide heat and power to the ISU campus. The sampling system extracts flue gas from the hot cyclone of the boiler and conditions it by removing particulates and moisture. This facility presently supports studies of char combustion and sorbent kinetics. The old Ames Water Pollution Control Plant houses a variety of projects sponsored by the Iowa Energy Center of Iowa, including a 3 MW fluidized bed gasifier.