Nitrogen Oxide Evolution in Oxy-Coal Combustion
This paper investigates emissions of NOx from pulverized coal burning in O2/CO2 environments.Such environments are pertinent to oxy-coal combustion, a promising “clean-coal” technology. The replacement of the inert nitrogen gas in air with carbon dioxide, which has different physical properties, alters the combustion conditions in the furnace. Hence, the purpose of thiswork is to theoretically examine the effects of (a) the oxygen concentration in the O2/CO2 gases,and (b) the resulting combustion temperatures, on the evolution of NOx. To achieve these goals apreviously published kinetic model was used, which assumes that fuel-bound nitrogen is releasedalong with the tars during coal devolatilization and converts mostly to hydrogen cyanide. A sizable fraction of hydrogen cyanide is then converted to NO. Flame simulations were performed using Cantera to investigate the relative impacts of temperature and oxygen mole fraction, and to understand the causes of the observed trends.