Flame structure and NO emissions in gas combustion of low calorific heating value

Numerical study on addition effects of CO and CO₂ in fuel side (H₂/Ar) on flame structure and NO emission behaviour in counterflow diffusion flame has been conducted with detailed chemistry to fundamentally understand gas combustion of low calorific heating value. A modified Miller–Bowman reaction scheme including a complementary C₂-reaction subset is adopted. The radiative heat loss term, which is based on an optically thin model and it especially important at low strain rates, is included to cover the importance of the temperature dependence on NO emission. Special interest is taken to estimate the roles of added CO and CO₂ in fuel side on flame structure and NO emission characteristics. Increasing CO concentration in fuel side contributes to the enhancement of combustion due to the increase effect of the concentration of reactive species. The increase of added CO₂ concentration in fuel side suppresses overall reaction rate due to the high heat capacity. It is seen that chemical effects due to the breakdown of added CO₂ in fuel side make C₂-branch chemical species be remarkably formed and the prevailing contribution of prompt NO is a direct outcome of these effects. It is found that in the combined forms of H₂/CO/CO₂/Ar fuels the effects of added CO and CO₂ concentrations in fuel side compete contrarily to each other in NO emission behaviour. Particularly the role of added CO is stressed in the side of restraining prompt NO. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Flame characteristics in H2/CO synthetic gas diffusion flames diluted with CO2: Effects of radiative heat loss and mixture composition

Numerical study is conducted to understand the impact of fuel composition and flame radiation in flame structure and their oxidation process in H₂/CO synthetic gas diffusion flame with and without CO₂ dilution. The models of Sun et al. and David et al., which have been well known to be best-fitted for H₂/CO synthetic mixture flames, are evaluated for H₂/CO synthetic mixture flames diluted with CO₂. Effects of radiative heat loss to flame characteristics are also examined in terms of syngas mixture composition. Importantly contributing reaction steps to heat release rate are compared for the synthetic gas mixture flames of high contents of H₂ and CO, individually, with and without CO₂ dilution. The modification of the oxidation pathways is also addressed.     

Combustion of suspended fine solid fuel in air inside inert porous medium: A heat transfer analysis

Present work is a numerical analysis of combustion of submicron carbon particles inside an inert porous medium where the particles in form of suspension in air enter the porous medium. A one-dimensional heat transfer model has been developed using the two-flux gray radiation approximation for radiative heat flux equations. The effects of absorption coefficient, emissivity of medium, flame position and reaction enthalpy flux on radiative energy output efficiency have been presented. It is revealed that in porous medium the combustion of suspended carbon particles is similar to premixed single phase gaseous fuel combustion except the former has shorter preheating temperature zone length. Use of porous ceramic having high porosity and made of Al₂O₃ or ZrO₂ with stabilized flame position operated nearer to downstream end will ensure radiative output maximum and minimum at downstream and upstream end, respectively.     

Combined solar energy and combustion of hydrogen-based fuels under MILD conditions

This work presents the stability and performance characteristics of a Hybrid Solar Receiver Combustor operating in the Moderate or Intense Low oxygen Dilution (MILD) combustion regime. The device was operated at 12-kW_th in two different modes of operation, i.e. combustion-only (MILD) and mixed (combustion and solar introduced into the device simultaneously), using natural gas (NG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), hydrogen (H₂), NG/H₂ and LPG/H₂ blends. A 5-kW_el xenon-arc lamp was used to simulate the concentrated solar radiation introduced into the device. The influence of the mode of operation and fuel composition on the combustion stability, thermal efficiency, energy balance, pollutant emissions, heat losses and distribution of heat flux within the receiver are presented for a range of values of the heat extraction. It was found that MILD combustion can be successfully stabilised within the HSRC over a broad range of operating conditions and fuel type, and in mixed operations, with low CO (for carbon-based fuels) and NO_x emissions. The addition of H₂ and/or concentrated solar radiation to the MILD process was found to increase its stability limits. Mixed and combustion-only operations showed similar performance, regardless of the fuel type, providing further evidence that the fuel flow rate can be used dynamically to compensate for variability in the solar resource. Also, the heat extracted from the heat exchanger and the specific fuel consumption were found to increase and decrease, respectively, by adding H₂ to the system for both modes of operation, showing that hydrogen addition is beneficial. The numerical analysis revealed that the higher performance with H₂ is attributable to a higher radiative heat transfer rate than for NG and LPG under MILD conditions.     

Effect of thermal boundary layer on radiative heat transfer from combustion plasma

The effect of thermal boundary layer on radiative heat transfer considering nongray nonisothermal plasma has been calculated for potassium seeded watergas combustion plasma. The effect of combustion species concentration and seed concentration on radiative flux under the equilibrium flow and frozen flow condition has been studied. It has been estimated that reduction in radiative flux due to cold boundary layer may be upto 25%.     

In-depth numerical analysis on the determination of amount of CO2 recirculation in LNG/O2/CO2 combustion

The determination of proper amount of CO₂ recirculation is one of the critical issues in oxy-fuel combustion technology for the reduction of CO₂ emissions by the capture and sequestration of CO₂ species in flue gas. The objective of this study is to determine the optimum value of O₂ fraction in O₂/CO₂ mixture to obtain similar flame characteristics with LNG–air combustion. To this end, a systematic numerical investigation has been made in order to resolve the physical feature of LNG/O₂/CO₂ combustion. For this, SIMPLEC algorithm is used for the resolution of pressure velocity coupling. And for the Reynolds stresses and turbulent reaction the popular two-equation (k–ε) model by Launder and Spalding and eddy breakup model by Magnussen and Hjertager were incorporated, respectively. The radiative heat transfer is calculated from the volumetric energy loss rate from flame, considering absorption coefficient of H₂O, CO₂ and CO gases. A series of parametric investigation has been made as function of oxidizer type, O₂ fraction and fuel type for the resolution of combustion characteristics such as flame temperature, turbulent mixing and species concentration. Further the increased effect of CO₂ species on the flame temperature is carefully examined by the consideration of change of specific heat and radiation effect. Based on this study, it was observed that the same mass flow rate of CO₂ with N₂ appears as the most adequate value for the amount of CO₂ recirculation for LNG fuel since the lower C_p value for the CO₂ relative to N₂ species at lower temperatures cancels the effect of the higher C_p value at higher temperatures over the range of flame temperatures present in this study. However, for the fuel with high C/H ratio, for example of coal, the reduced amount of CO₂ recirculation is recommended in order to compensate the increased radiation heat loss. In general, the calculation results were physically acceptable and consistent with reported data in literature. Further work is strongly recommended for a large-scale combustor such as coal-fired power plant to figure out important parameters caused by the effect of increased combustor size and the presence of particle phase, etc.     

On the influence of the char gasification reactions on NO formation in flameless coal combustion

Flameless combustion is a well known measure to reduce NO_x emissions in gas combustion but has not yet been fully adapted to pulverised coal combustion. Numerical predictions can provide detailed information on the combustion process thus playing a significant role in understanding the basic mechanisms for pollutant formation. In simulations of conventional pulverised coal combustion the gasification by CO₂ or H₂O is usually omitted since its overall contribution to char oxidation is negligible compared to the oxidation with O₂. In flameless combustion, however, due to the strong recirculation of hot combustion products, primarily CO₂ and H₂O, and the thereby reduced concentration of O₂ in the reaction zone the local partial pressures of CO₂ and H₂O become significantly higher than that for O₂. Therefore, the char reaction with CO₂ and H₂O is being reconsidered. This paper presents a numerical study on the importance of these reactions on pollutant formation in flameless combustion. The numerical models used have been validated against experimental data. By varying the wall temperature and the burner excess air ratio, different cases have been investigated and the impact of considering gasification on the prediction of NO formation has been assessed. It was found that within the investigated ranges of these parameters the fraction of char being gasified increases up to 35%. This leads to changes in the local gas composition, primarily CO distribution, which in turn influences NO formation predictions. Considering gasification the prediction of NO emission is up to 40% lower than the predicted emissions without gasification reactions being taken into account.     

Spectrally correlated radiation and laminar forced convection in the entrance region of a circular duct

The two-dimensional combined radiative and convective transfer in emitting and absorbing real gases in the entrance region of a duct with a jump of wall temperature is studied. The axial propagation of radiation is taken into account in the analysis. The flow field and the energy equations are solved simultaneously and the radiative properties of the flowing gases, CO₂ or H₂O, are modeled by using either the narrow-band correlated-k model or the global absorption distribution function (ADF) model. The results are presented in terms of temperature and radiative power fields, and of the evolution of bulk temperatures and of heat transfer coefficients. Due to the axial component of the radiative flux, the gas is preheated or precooled before the change in wall temperature and this induces a persistent difference between the results of 1-D and 2-D radiation analyses. Some differences between CO₂ and H₂O temperature and radiative power profiles, due to the different structures of their spectra, are put in evidence. The ADF model, only suitable for gray walls, is shown to be less accurate when the gas is heated than when it is cooled.     

NO emission characteristics in counterflow diffusion flame of blended fuel of H2/CO2/Ar

Flame structure and NO emission characteristics in counterflow diffusion flame of blended fuel of H₂/CO₂/Ar have been numerically simulated with detailed chemistry. The combination of H₂, CO₂ and Ar as fuel is selected to clearly display the contribution of hydrocarbon products to flame structure and NO emission characteristics due to the breakdown of CO₂. A radiative heat loss term is involved to correctly describe the flame dynamics especially at low strain rates. The detailed chemistry adopts the reaction mechanism of GRI 2.11, which consists of 49 species and 279 elementary reactions. All mechanisms including thermal, NO₂, N₂O and Fenimore are taken into account to separately evaluate the effects of CO₂ addition on NO emission characteristics. The increase of added CO₂ quantity causes flame temperature to fall since at high strain rates a diluent effect is prevailing and at low strain rates the breakdown of CO₂ produces relatively populous hydrocarbon products and thus the existence of hydrocarbon products inhibits chain branching. It is also found that the contribution of NO production by N₂O and NO₂ mechanisms are negligible and that thermal mechanism is concentrated on only the reaction zone. As strain rate and CO₂ quantity increase, NO production is remarkably augmented. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

WSGG models for radiative heat transfer calculations in hydrogen and hydrogen-mixture flames at various pressures

Radiative heat transfer strongly influences pollutant emission prediction in combustion systems. In this work, the weighted sum of gray gas (WSGG) models have been developed for calculating radiative heat transfer in hydrogen and hydrogen-mixture flames. The total pressure effect on cut-off width of the Lorentz line profile is analyzed and properly considered in the line by line (LBL) calculations. Based on the LBL benchmark results, two sets of WSGG model correlations have been proposed for H₂O and its mixture with CO₂ at a molar ratio (Mr) of 3, representing the typical combustion products of the hydrogen and a hydrogen-rich mixture (e.g., 50% hydrogen and 50% methane). The WSGG models are applicable and accurate with a total pressure ranging from 1 to 60 atm. Partial pressure is explicitly applied as an independent variable in the model coefficients to account for its nonlinear effect on gas emissivity, which is particularly important for a participating gas medium with a large amount of H₂O at a total pressure below 5 atm. Detailed studies are carried out to solve radiative heat transfer in non-isothermal and non-homogeneous gas media at different conditions. Results show improvement over the existing WSGG models at the atmospheric pressure and have good agreement with LBL solutions under various conditions.     

Syngas combustion radiation profiling through spectrometry and DFCD processing techniques

Experimental investigations of H₂ and H₂-enriched syngas flame radiation properties have been conducted through spectroscopic and DFCD (Digital Flame Colour Discrimination) techniques. A spectrograph was employed to quantify the emission profile of H₂-based flames in the UV–visible spectral domain. The OH* emission was found to be the strongest in reactants with highest amount of H₂. Further addition of CO and/or CO₂ resulted in the reduction of OH* intensity with the addition of CO₂ causing greater radical intensity-loss than that of CO. The decrease in OH* intensity is accompanied by a corresponding increase in the CO–O* broadband continuum in the short-wavelength domain of the visible spectrum. Such reduction of OH* along with increase in CO–O* intensity can be related to the endothermic reaction mechanism of CO + OH => CO₂ + H, which describes the role of CO/CO₂ addition in H₂-enriched syngas flames. Comparison with direct imaging results provided additional credence to the effect of temperature reduction as flames with CO and/or CO₂ additions resembled colourations closer to typical bluish premixed hydrocarbon flame. The employment of DFCD processing effectively characterised different syngas combustion conditions by combining aspects of digital flame colour intensities with spatial combustion distributions. This colour signal quantification method was shown to yield useful characterisation of H₂-based flames, similar to the use of OH* chemiluminescence intensity variation from spectrometry. Also, DCFD analysis was able to depict the variances between the burning of different syngas gaseous constituents. Thus, useful image-based parameters related to the H₂-based combustion can be derived and potentially applied as a practical monitoring and characterisation mean for syngas combustion.     

Analysis of H2 and CO production via solar thermochemical reacting system of NiFe2O4 redox cycles combined with CH4 partial oxidation

Thermal reduction of the partial oxidation of CH₄NiFe₂O₄ followed by oxidation with H₂O and CO₂ was numerically investigated for H₂ and CO production. P1 radiation model was used to account for radiative heat transfer. The synergistic effect of the reactivity of Fe/Ni exhibited a very promising strategy for producing 45% of syngas with 2.54 ratios of H₂:CO at the first step and 55% of syngas with 2.34 ratios of H₂:CO at the second step. The increase in incident radiation heat flux to 437.69 kW/m² resulted in higher reduction kinetics of species conversion until the formation of oxygen carriers consisting of 65% of FeO, 35% of NiFe and 2.6% of carbon deposition. However, during the reduction process, the decrease in total pressure to 0.05 MPa enhanced the species reactivity and the production of H₂ and CO while minimizing carbon deposition. Moreover, the oxidation temperature, operating pressure and the concentration of oxidizing species have strong impacts on the oxidation kinetics. Unlike high thermal reduction process, increasing the total pressure to 1 MPa has favorable effects on syngas production at oxidation step.     

Monte Carlo modeling of radiative transfer in a turbulent sooty flame

The calculation of radiative transfer within a sooty turbulent ethylene-air diffusion jet flame has been carried out by using a Monte Carlo method and an accurate CK model for the gases. The influence of the turbulence-radiation interaction (TRI) has been studied. In the TRI modeling, the radiative properties of the assumed homogeneous turbulent structures are randomly obtained from a multidimensional probability density function (PDF) of the reaction progress variable, of the mixture ratio and of the soot volume fraction. This joint PDF is obtained from an Eulerian-Lagrangian turbulent combustion model and the sizes of the turbulent structures are directly derived from a k-? model. In the considered flame, the TRI effect is an increase of the radiative heat loss by about 30%. The radiative heat loss becomes almost equal to one-third of the chemical heat release. Soot particles play the most important role in the global radiative heat loss but the influence of gaseous species like CO₂ and H₂O can be important in the local energy balance.     

The relative contribution of waste heat from power plants to global warming

Evidence on global climate change, being caused primarily by rising levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, is perceived as fairly conclusive. It is generally attributed to the enhanced greenhouse effect, resulting from higher levels of trapped heat radiation by increasing atmospheric concentrations of gases such as CO₂ (carbon dioxide). Much of these gases originate from power plants and fossil fuel combustion. However, the fate of vast amounts of waste heat rejected into the environment has evaded serious scholarly research. While 1 kWh electricity generation in a typical condensing coal-fired power plant emits around 1 kg of CO₂, it also puts about 2 kWh energy into the environment as low grade heat. For nuclear (fission) electricity the waste heat release per kWh is somewhat higher despite much lower CO₂ releases. This paper evaluates the impact of waste heat rejection combined with CO₂ emissions using Finland and California as case examples. The immediate effects of waste heat release from power production and radiative forcing by CO₂ are shown to be similar. However, the long-term (hundred years) global warming by CO₂-caused radiative forcing is about twenty-five times stronger than the immediate effects, being responsible for around 92% of the heat-up caused by electricity production.     

A line by line based weighted sum of gray gases model for inhomogeneous CO2–H2O mixture in oxy-fired combustion

The HITEMP 2010 spectral emissivity database has been employed in line by line (LBL) calculation to produce an accurate total emissivity database for H₂O–CO₂ mixtures of the composition characteristics for the oxy-fired combustion. A wide range of temperatures, pressure-path length products and molar fraction ratios have been covered in the database. By using the LBL based emissivity database, an accurate set of coefficients has been obtained for the weighted sum of gray gases model (WSGGM). Compared to the standard WSGGM, the present model includes the molar ratio of H₂O–CO₂ mixtures in its formulation which leads to one set of coefficients required to represent the entire range of molar ratio. This simplifies the implementation of the model in the simulation of radiative heat transfer in high inhomogeneous media providing higher accuracy. The model is validated against the benchmark solutions for oxy-fired conditions. Obtained results have been compared with some of the previously reported WSGGMs.     

H2 – CH4 blending fuels combustion using a cyclonic burner on colorless distributed combustion

H₂ – CH₄ mixture fuels can be promising for reducing carbon-based emissions. However, because of higher pollutant emission (such as NO_X) problems during hydrogen combustion, a new combustion method can be favorable. Colorless distributed combustion (CDC) is emerging here. CDC enables ultra-low pollutant emissions along with reduced flame instabilities, combustion noise, improved combustion efficiency, etc. Considering those benefits, methane and the hydrogen-enriched methane (60% CH₄ – 40% H₂, 50% CH₄ – 50% H₂, 40% CH₄ – 60% H₂) fuels have been consumed using a cyclonic burner providing more residence time at an equivalence ratio of 0.83 under distributed regime. For the modelings, Reynolds Stress Model (RSM) turbulence model, the assumed-shape with β-function Probability Density Function combustion model, and P-1 radiation model have been selected. To seek CDC, the oxygen concentration in the oxidizer was reduced with N₂ or CO₂ diluent from 21% O₂ to 13% O₂ at an interval of 2%. The air and the fuel temperatures were kept constant at 300 K. Besides, for seeking high-temperature air combustion (HiTAC) conditions the oxidizer temperature was changed to 600 K to simulate flue gas recirculation. The results showed that the temperature distributions changed to be more uniform considerably with a decrease in oxygen concentration for all cases. CDC also provided a considerable decrease in NO_X and a favorable reduction in CO at a certain oxygen concentration. It has been concluded that CO₂ as the diluent was more effective for reducing temperature levels and NO_X levels due to its greater heat capacity.     

RAD-NNET,a neural network based correlation developed for a realistic simulation of the non-gray radiative heat transfer effect in three-dimensional gas-particle mixtures

A neural network correlation, RAD-NNET, is developed to simulate the realistic effect of non-gray radiative absorption by a homogeneous mixture of combustion gases (CO₂ and H₂O) and soot using numerical data generated by RADCAL. RAD-NNET is then applied to assess the accuracy of some commonly accepted approximate approaches to evaluate radiative heat transfer in three-dimensional non-gray media. Results show that there are significant errors associated with the current approximate approaches. RAD-NNET can be readily implemented in commercial CFD codes to greatly enhance the accuracy of simulation of radiative heat transfer in practical engineering systems.     

NO mechanisms of syngas MILD combustion diluted with N2, CO2, and H2O

The NO mechanism under the moderate or intense low-oxygen dilution (MILD) combustion of syngas has not been systematically examined. This paper investigates the NO mechanism in the syngas MILD regime under the dilution of N₂, CO₂, and H₂O through counterflow combustion simulation. The syngas reaction mechanism and the counterflow combustion simulation are comprehensively validated under different CO/H₂ ratios and strain rates. The effects of oxygen volume fraction, CO/H₂ ratio, pressure, strain rate, and dilution atmosphere are systematically investigated. For all the MILD cases, the contribution of the prompt and NO-reburning routes to the overall NO emission is less than 0.1% due to the lack of CH₄ in fuel. At atmospheric pressure, the thermal route only accounts for less than 20% of the total NO emission because of the low reaction temperature. Moreover, at atmospheric pressure, the contribution of the NNH route to NO emission is always larger than 55% in the N₂ atmosphere. The N₂O-intermediate route is enhanced in CO₂ and H₂O atmospheres due to the increased third-body effects of CO₂ and H₂O through the reaction N₂ + O (+M) ? N₂O (+M). Especially in the H₂O atmosphere, the N₂O-intermediate route contributes to 60% NO at most. NO production is reduced with increasing CO/H₂ ratio or pressure, mainly due to decreased NO formation from the NNH route. Importantly, a high reaction temperature and low NO emission are simultaneously achieved at high pressure. To minimize NO emission, the reactions should be operated at high values of CO/H₂ ratios (i.e., >4) and pressures (e.g., P > 10 atm), low oxygen volume fractions (e.g., X_O2 < 15%), and using H₂O as a diluent. This study provides a new fundamental understanding of the NO mechanism of syngas MILD combustion in N₂, CO₂, and H₂O atmospheres.     

Combustion characteristics of biomass in SouthEast Asia

Gas emission during combustion of mixed tropical wood, bamboo, oil palm trunk, acacia, and rubber wood have been investigated by using TG–MS in presence of oxygen as well as FTIR. The weight decreasing profiles and the gas formation rates of oil palm trunk was significantly different among the samples although their elemental composition was almost the same from biomass samples. It was found that H₂O is the main product formed for all samples. The evolving rates of the gaseous products during the combustion and infrared spectrums such as CO, H₂O, CO₂, CH₄ and COOH⁺ were found. The DTG curves spectrums for biomass present four overlapping peaks.     

Account for variations in the H2O to CO2 molar ratio when modelling gaseous radiative heat transfer with the weighted-sum-of-grey-gases model

This work focuses on models suitable for taking into account the spectral properties of combustion gases in computationally demanding applications, such as computational fluid dynamics. One such model, which is often applied in combustion modelling, is the weighted-sum-of-grey-gases (WSGG) model. The standard formulation of this model uses parameters fitted to a wide range of temperatures, but only for specific ratios of H₂O to CO₂. Then, the model is limited to gases from fuels with a given composition of hydrogen and carbon, unless several sets of fitted parameters are used. Here, the WSGG model is modified to account for various ratios of H₂O to CO₂ concentrations. The range of molar ratios covers both oxy-fuel combustion of coal, with dry- or wet flue gas recycling, as well as combustion of natural gas. The non-grey formulation of the modified WSGG model is tested by comparing predictions of the radiative source term and wall fluxes in a gaseous domain between two infinite plates with predictions by a statistical narrow-band model. Two grey approximations are also included in the comparison, since such models are frequently used for calculation of gas radiation in comprehensive combustion computations. It is shown that the modified WSGG model significantly improves the estimation of the radiative source term compared to the grey models, while the accuracy of wall fluxes is similar to that of the grey models or better.