Effect of leaching on the ash behavior of wheat straw and olive residue during fluidized bed combustion

Fluidized bed combustion has been proven to be an attractive method for the conversion of agroresidues to energy offering economical and environmental benefits. The low melting point ash of agroresidues cause a number of problems e.g., sintering, agglomeration, deposition, etc,, which consist the main obstacles for economical and viable application of this conversion method. Leaching that is considered to be a low cost pretreatment technique for the elimination of ash related problems in biomass boilers studied here. The produced results clearly demonstrate that leaching could help significantly to reduce the ash related problems caused during the operation of fluidized bed combustors with biomass. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd, All rights reserved.