Emission Characteristics of NO and NO2 in Rich-Lean Combustion of Hydrogen

Abstract

Hydrogen is expected as a clean and renewable alternative to the conventional hydrocarbon fuels. Because the only possible pollutants from the hydrogen combustion are nitrogen oxides (NOx), it is crucial to reduce the NOx emission in the hydrogen utilization. The rich-lean combustion is well known as a technique to reduce the emission of the Zel’dovich NO from the continuous combustion burners for such as gas turbines and boilers. Because the Zel’dovich NO occupies a large part of the total NOx emission, the rich-lean combustion is quite effective to reduce the NOx emission. However, the NOx reduction effect of the rich-lean combustion has not yet been proven for the hydrogen fuel, while the effect has been demonstrated for the hydrocarbon fuels. On the other hand, the prompt NO is emitted from the hydrocarbon combustion especially under the fuel-rich conditions. Though the amount of the prompt NO is quite small for premixed or diffusion combustion, it could be a relatively significant part in the total NO emission from the rich-lean combustion due to the decreased Zel’dovich NO. The authors estimate that hydrogen is more suitable for the rich-lean combustion compared with hydrocarbons, because hydrogen does not emit the prompt NO even under the fuel-rich conditions which necessarily exist in the rich-lean combustion. This research proposes the rich-lean combustion as a method to reduce the NOx emission from hydrogen combustion and experimentally analyzes the characteristics using a coaxial rich-lean burner with varying the mixture conditions.