Combustion Testing and Research Service

Diverse Equipment, Comprehensive Testing Capabilities

Southern Research maintains a diverse inventory of experimental equipment for performing both fundamental and applied combustion testing. Small-scale combustion experiments can be performed in our High-Temperature Drop-Tube Furnace or in bench-top flame experiments as well as in small-muffle furnaces or other laboratory-scale test equipment. These fundamental tests can be used to answer specific questions about a particular circumstance, or they can allow data collection from which fundamental rate constants and kinetic models can be derived.

Combustion Research Facility

This advanced facility at Southern Research was developed specifically for applied research relative to full-scale power plants. Since the Combustion Research Facility was constructed more than 20 years ago, it has been used extensively to perform larger-scale fundamental and applied research relative to combustion and air-pollution control technologies. This innovative facility was specifically designed to fire the wide range of coal types used in the fleet of coal-fired boilers across the United States. However, it has also been effective for testing numerous other applications including natural-gas-fired technologies, biomass-cofiring, torrefied biomass testing, 100% replacement of coal with biomass, and waste-incineration technologies.