Influence of combustion parameters on NO_x production in an industrial boiler

NO_x formation during the combustion process occurs mainly through the oxidation of nitrogen in the combustion air (thermal NO_x) and through oxidation of nitrogen with the fuel (prompt NO_x). The present study aims to investigate numerically the problem of NO_x pollution using a model furnace of an industrial boiler utilizing fuel gas. The importance of this problem is mainly due to its relation to the pollutants produced by large boiler furnaces used widely in thermal industrial plants. Governing conservation equations of mass, momentum and energy, and equations representing the transport of species concentrations, turbulence, combustion and radiation modeling in addition to NO modeling equations were solved together to present temperature and NO distribution inside the radiation and convection sections of the boiler. The boiler under investigation is a 160 MW, water-tube boiler, gas fired with natural gas and having two vertically aligned burners. The simulation study provided the NO distribution in the combustion chamber and in the exhaust gas at various operating conditions of fuel to air ratio with varying either the fuel or air mass flow rate, inlet air temperature and combustion primary air swirl angle. In particular, the simulation provided more insight on the correlation between the maximum furnace temperature and furnace average temperatures and the thermal NO concentration. The results have shown that the furnace average temperature and NO concentration decrease as the excess air factor λ increases for a given air mass flow rate. When considering a fixed value of mass flow rate of fuel, the results show that increasing λ results in a maximum value of thermal NO concentration at the exit of the boiler at λ = 1.2. As the combustion air temperature increases, furnace temperature increases and the thermal NO concentration increases sharply. The results also show that NO concentration at exit of the boiler exhibits a minimum value at around swirl angle of 45°.