Influence of Excess Air Factor on NOx Emissions From a 200 kW Swirl Burner

Abstract

NOx formation during the combustion process occurs mainly through the oxidation of nitrogen in the combustion air (thermal NOx) and through oxidation of nitrogen with the fuel (prompt NOx). The present study aims to investigate numerically the problem of NOx pollution using a model of combustion chamber with 200 kW swirl burner utilizing propane as fuel. The importance of this problem is mainly due to its relation to the pollutants produced by boiler furnaces and gas turbines, which 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 NOx modeling equations were solved together to present temperature and OH distribution inside the combustion chamber, and the NOx concentration at the combustion chamber exit, at various operating conditions of fuel to air ratio. In particular, the simulation provided more insight on the correlation between the peak flame temperature and the thermal NOx concentration. The results have shown that the peak flame temperature and NOx concentration decrease as the excess air factor λ increases. When considering a fixed value of mass flow rate of fuel, the results show that increasing λ results in a maximum value of thermal NOx concentration at the exit of the combustion chamber at λ = 1.05. As the combustion air temperature increases, and the thermal NOx concentration increases sharply. However, when λ exceeds this value NOx concentration starts to decrease due to the combustion air temperature decrease.