Recovery Boiler Model Research Facility

The recovery boiler is the largest single piece of capital investment in a pulp mill. Problems which affect its throughput and its emissions include the mixing inside of the furnace of the black liquor fuel and air. Typical flow patterns can be studied (within certain modelling limitations) using water as a working fluid. For these purposes, two reduced scale water flow models of recovery boilers have been built and located in the Pulp and Paper Centre at U.B.C. Flow visualization of the fluid motion and measurements of the actual liquid velocities are possible with various arrangements of jet inlet velocity and size. Velocity measurements are made with a two component laser Doppler velocimeter for velocity and specialized lighting arrangements are used for flow visualization.