Abstract
Hydrogen-enriched natural gas (HENG) is a promising low-carbon fuel in the industry. The fuel flexibility of the existing natural gas-fueled industrial combustion equipment is a crucial issue for the HENG application. This study evaluates the thermal and emission performances of a large-scale industrial steam boiler fueled with HENG. Considering different operation strategies, three boiler operation scenarios were proposed, namely, the unchanged fuel/air valve opening (Scenario 1), the maintained boiler capacity with unchanged valve control logic (Scenario 2), and the maintained boiler capacity with unchanged excess air ratio (Scenario 3). A model considering the thermal equilibrium and heat transfer inside the boiler was built to study the thermal efficiency under the three scenarios, and a chemical reaction network model was established to investigate the NOx emission characteristics. The results showed that thermal efficiency and NOx emission presented a similar variation trend. Both of them decreased in Scenarios 1 and 2 while increased in Scenario 3 as hydrogen volumetric fraction in HENG increased from 0 to 0.9. The differences in decarbonization potentials among the three scenarios were limited. This study implies that the trade-off between thermal efficiency and NOx emission should be carefully concerned when applying HENG to industrial steam boilers.
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