The power generation industry in the state of Victoria, Australia stands to gain significantly from process improvements and optimization which can potentially lead to cleaner production of cost effective electricity. The efficient operation of lignite based tangentially-fired combustion systems depends on critical issues such as ignition and combustion of the fuel, which are largely controlled by burner aerodynamics. The geometry of the burner and the ratio of velocities between the primary and secondary jets play an important role in achieving stable combustion, high burnout of fuel, low production of pollutants and control of fouling. Slot-burners are a vertically aligned stack of rectangular nozzles delivering primary fuel and secondary air jets, and are commonly used in tangentially-fired boilers. To obtain a better understanding of the overall combustion process, it is important to understand the aerodynamics of jet development from these burners. The starting point of this research was a CFD investigation of aerodynamics in the near-burner region of isolated rectangular slot-burners, using isothermal conditions, for various secondary to primary jet velocity ratios (φ). Cross-flow was then added to replicate a near-burner flow field similar to that found in a tangentially-fired furnace and the effect of changing φ in the near-burner region of the developing jets was again investigated. Experiments were carried out on an isothermal physical-burner model to obtain mean velocity and turbulent statistics for different nozzle geometries and a range of φ. A computational fluid dynamics investigation of these same jets was also performed to gain further insights into the complexities of flow field with experimental results used to validate CFD predictions. The primary jet substantially deviated from the geometric axis of the burner towards the furnace wall and became very unstable for higher φ. The causes of unfavourable aerodynamics were discussed and suggestions were made on possible remedies for such behaviour. Conventional lignite combustion in a full-scale tangentially-fired furnace was modelled. The model was used to assess the possibility of utilizing a new type of mechanically thermally dewatered (MTE) coal in existing furnaces.