Gasdynamic Abatement of NO_xEmission from Industrial Natural Gas Jet Diffusion Flames

Abstract

The aim of this research was to examine the possibilities of NO, emission abatement from high temperature industrial furnaces by controlling the gasdynamic parameters of natural gas flames. Thc following parameters were investigated: air and gas velocity at burner exit, air swirl angle, position of the burner nozzles and air staging. It has been shown that moderateswirling ofthecombustion air enhances the level of NO,, the lowest NO, emissions are observed for parallel air and gas flow burners. It is also demonstrated that to attain successful NO, abatement it is necessary to realize sufficient mixing ofthe flue gases with the combustion air before the flame temperature reaches its maximum value. The developed burner, enabling successful abatement of the maximum flame temperature, presents a large potential of industrial applications as a tool for NO, emission reduction from high temperature furnaces.

Numerical Simulation of Natural Gas-Swirl Burner

“…On the other hand, passive techniques to manipulate the flow dynamics and rates of mixing of reactants in the combustion zone have been the focus of research in the last decade. The application of nonaxisymmetric burner-exit geometries [3][4][5], staging of fuel-air mixing [6], swirl burners [7,8], as well as venturi-cascading [9,10] are examples of such techniques. "Venturi-cascading" technique was developed by Qubbaj and Gollahalli [9,10] in the last three years.…”

“…Previous studies have reported significant improvements in the combustion and emission characteristics of combustion systems utilizing swirl flow configurations [7,8,[11][12][13][14].…”