In order to improve the thermal efficiency of the oxygen-blown IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) for stricter environmental standards and cost-effective option, it is necessary to adopt the hot/dry gas cleaning system. In this system, the flame temperature of medium-btu gasified fuel is higher and so NOx production from nitrogen fixation is expected to increase significantly. Also the gasified fuel contains fuel nitrogen, such as ammonia, in the case of employing the hot/dry gas cleaning system. This ammonia is easily oxidized into fuel-NOx in the combustor. For contribution to the protection of the environment and low cost operations of all kinds of oxygen-blown IGCC, low NOx combustion technology for reducing both the fuel-NOx and thermal-NOx emission has to be developed. In this paper, we clarified effectiveness of applying both the two-stage combustion and the nitrogen injection, and the useful engineering guidelines for the low-NOx combustor design of oxygen-blown gasified, medium-btu fuels. Main results obtained are as follows: (1) Based on the fundamental combustion tests using the small diffusion burner, we clarified that equivalence ratio at the primary combustion zone has to be adjusted due to the fuel conditions, such as methane concentration, CO/H2 molar ratio, and calorific values of gasified fuels in the case of the two-stage combustion method for reducing fuel-NOx emission. (2) From the combustion tests of the medium-btu fueled combustor the two-stage combustion with nitrogen direct injection into the combustor results in reduction of NOx emission to 80ppm (corrected at 16% O2) or less, the conversion rate of ammonia to NOx was 35% under the gas turbine operational conditions for IGCC in the case where fuel contains 3% of methane and 2135ppm of ammonia. By means of nitrogen direct injection, the thermal efficiency of the plant improved by approximately 0.3 percent (absolute), compared with a case where nitrogen is premixed with gasified fuel. The CO emission concentration decreased drastically, as low as 20ppm, or combustion efficiency was kept higher than 99.9%. Furthermore, based on the fundamental combustion tests’ results, the ammonia conversion rate is expected to decrease to 16% and NOx emission to 26ppm in the case of gasified fuel that contains 0.1% methane and 500ppm of ammonia. From the above results, it is clarified that two-stage combustion method with nitrogen injection is very effective for reducing both the fuel-NOx and thermal-NOx emissions at once in IGCC and it shows the bright prospects for low NOx and stable combustion technology of the medium-btu fuel.
