A Consortium of Large Scale Facilities in the Field of
Energy, Combustion and the Environment

The Foundation's research station, head office and communication centre are located within the Corus industrial zone at IJmuiden in the Netherlands. For young, energetic and adventurous individuals IJmuiden is ideally located within easy reach of Amsterdam city centre which is just 30 minutes away. In addition to this IJmuiden is just 15 minutes from the cultural city of Haarlem.

Accommodation is organised for visiting investigators in the lively sea-side village of Wijk aan Zee, 10 minutes cycle from the IFRF. Wijk aan Zee hosts the well known Corus International Chess Tournament each year. It is also an extremely popular sea-side resort during the summer and has a very active social scene the whole year round.

The Foundation has a long-standing commitment to training engineers and scientists for roles in industry. Researchers from across Europe work at IJmuiden for fixed periods of on average four years, before entering industrial employment in their own country. The EuroFlam programme grew out of this concept and enhances this aspect of the IFRF's work. The programme is co-ordinated by Mr. Peter Roberts, the EuroFlam Programme Manager, Mr. Willem de Kamp, the Operational Director, and Dr. Roman Weber, the Technical Director.

The combustion facilities at IJmuiden are in the 1 to 4MWth range and are backed up by a wide range of measurement, diagnostic and computational equipment. IFRF furnace No.1 is a water-cooled test facility consisting of eleven segments, each equipped with access ports for making detailed in-flame measurements. It can be operated on gaseous, liquid or solid fuels, with a thermal input up to 4MWth. The furnace has six air flow controllers and oxygen and nitrogen supplies, allowing the highest flexibility of use. Different levels of heat extraction can be achieved by the insertion of additional water cooling loops in the furnace, enabling a variety of industrial processes to be simulated.

Investigators can access a full complement of gas analysis equipment to determine the gas composition in the flame, the furnace and the stack. All inputs and outputs are recorded continuously using a computerised data acquisition system.

An isothermal plug flow reactor is used to reproduce the conditions that a solid fuel particle experiences in an industrial flame. Solid particles of up to 500mm diameter can be characterised in terms of volatile matter release, fuel nitrogen release, NOX formation, char kinetics and burnout behaviour. To simulate the highly radiant flame zone found in cement preparation kilns, investigators can use a 10m long tunnel furnace, which can be fired with any fossil fuel at 2MWth.

(Photo: Waste-Derived Fuels)

A wide range of solid fuels can be prepared for firing using a specialised processing plant. In addition, supplementary facilities may be used for the preparation and handling of non-standard fuels. Solid fuels handled at IJmuiden include coals from lignite through to anthracite, pulverised wood, straw, petroleum cokes, oil shales, dried sewage sludge, waste paper and waste plastics. The temperature and composition of the oxidant can be changed using air preheating and oxygen and nitrogen supply facilities. In addition, a flue gas cleaning system is used to remove harmful pollutants from the furnace exhaust streams, and can itself be used as a research tool.

More on EuroFlam at IFRF ... 

More about IFRF EuroFlam Contract ...