Experimental Study on the NO and N2O Formation Characteristics during Biomass Combustion

Abstract

In the present study, the NO and N2O formation characteristics during combustion of five biomass fuels (rice straw, wheat straw, corn stalk, sugarcane leaf, and eucalyptus bark) and one bituminous coal, as a comparison, were investigated in a horizontal fixed-bed reactor. It showed that there was still a considerable degree of N2O conversion for biomass fuels, although NO was formed in a much larger amount. Most of NO and N2O were formed during the devolatilization stage for biomass fuels; therefore, optimizing the supply of air and fuel during biomass combustion in actual boilers can be expected to achieve ultralow emissions of nitrogen oxides. There was no clear correlation between the NO and N2O yields and fuel N content, which indicated that the nitrogen functionality and other components, such as inherent mineral matter, present in biomass must have great influence on the nitrogen transformation during thermal processing. When rice straw was co-fired with eucalyptus bark, nonlinear behavior could be ...