An Oxy-Hydrocarbon Model of Fossil Fuels

This paper asserts a new method of analyzing fossil fuels, useful for sorting coals into well-defined categories and for the identification of outlying ultimate analysis data. It describes a series of techniques starting with a new multivariant approach for describing the lower ranks of coal, progressing to a classical, but modified, single-variant approach for the volatile and high-energy ranks. In addition, for a few special cases, multiple low and high ranks are also well described by the multivariant approach. As useful as these techniques are for analyzing fuel chemistry in the laboratory arena, this work was initiated in support of Exergetic Systems' Input/Loss Method. At commercial coal-fired power plants, Input/Loss allows the determination of fuel chemistry based on combustion effluents. The methods presented allow equations to be developed independent of combustion stoichiometrics, which improve Input/Loss accuracy in determining fuel chemistry on-line and in real time.