Experimental investigation of NOx emissions during pulverized char combustion in oxygen-enriched air preheated with a circulating fluidized bed

Abstract An experimental investigation on NO x emissions of pulverized char combustion in oxygen-enriched air was carried out in a new test system consisting of a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) and a down-fired combustor (DFC). In this paper, the pulverized char combustion characteristics and NO x emission characteristics in the air conditions, the local oxygen-enriched air conditions in the CFB and the overall oxygen-enriched air conditions were studied. The results show that when the primary air oxygen concentration increased from 21.0% to 24.6% and to 28.2%, the ratio of fuel-nitrogen converted to nitrogen in the CFB increased from 39.7% to 45.0% and to 50.8%, respectively. This finding indicates that the preheating process in the CFB was one of the important reasons why the preheating combustion technology could significantly reduce NO x emissions. Compared with the air combustion conditions, the NO emissions decreased to almost half of the original emissions when only the primary air oxygen concentration increased. On this basis, the NO emissions increased slightly when the air oxygen concentration was also increased in the DFC. Under these conditions, the variations in the char combustion efficiency were consistent with the variations in the temperature distribution. The feasibility and superiority of integrating the preheating combustion technology and oxygen-enriched air combustion technology are verified.