Combustion

Definition
• Combustion is defined as the burning of a fuel and
oxidant to produce heat and/or work.
• Combustion includes thermal, hydrodynamic, and
chemical processes. It starts with the mixing of fuel
and oxidant, and sometimes in the presence of other
species or catalysts.
• The fuel can be gaseous, liquid, or solid and the
mixture may be ignited with a heat source.
 What is it????
• Combustion is defined as the burning, or
oxidation, of matter to produce energy. Two
substances are necessary for combustion to
occur—a fuel and an oxidizer.
• A fuel can be anything from the wood, coal, or
natural gas used to produce heat. An oxidizer, as
its name implies, is a substance that contains
oxygen.
• Combustion or burning is a complex sequence of
exothermic chemical reactions between a fuel
(usually a hydrocarbon) and an oxidant
accompanied by the production of heat or both
heat and light in the form of either a glow or
flames, appearance of light flickering.
• A chemical change, especially oxidation,
accompanied by the production of heat and light
 What does combustion help us do?

Combustion is useful to make our lives more

comfortable
– Cars burn Gasoline
– Burning Coal makes electricity
– We burn natural gas to heat our homes and heat
our water
– Can you think of any more?
 What else does combustion do ?

• It produces gases that are put into the

atmosphere
• H20, CO2,
• NOx, SOx
Simple representation of the
combustion process
Cont…
 Stationary Combustion Sources
• Power Plants
• Refineries
• Commercial and Residential Furnaces
• Boilers
• Burners
• Turbines
• Internal Combustion Engines
• Heaters
• Kilns
• Ovens
• Flares
• Municipal Solid Waste Combustors
 Stationary Source Emission Calculations

For CO2
Activity Level: Based on quantity of fuel combusted
Emission Factor: Based on fuel carbon content and heating value
For CH4 and N2O
Activity Level: Based on quantity of fuel combusted
Emission Factor: Based on fuel type and combustor technology
type
 Combustion Reactions

• It is a reaction in which oxygen reacts with another element

or compound (generally a hydrocarbon) to produce energy in
the form of heat and light.

Types of Combustion Reaction

Complete
• Clean combustion with a hydrocarbon produces carbon
dioxide and water
Incomplete
• Dirty combustion With a hydrocarbon produces carbon
and/or carbon monoxide as well as carbon dioxide
Examples of Reactions
Cont…
Cont…
 Complete Combustion

• Complete combustion, the reactant will burn in oxygen, producing a

limited number of products.
• When a hydrocarbon burns in oxygen, the reaction will only yield carbon
dioxide and water.
• When a hydrocarbon or any fuel burns in air, the combustion products will
also include nitrogen. When elements such as carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, are
burned, they will yield the most common oxides.
• Carbon will yield carbon dioxide. Nitrogen will yield nitrogen dioxide.
Sulfur will yield sulfur dioxide.
• It should be noted that complete combustion is almost impossible to
achieve. In reality, as actual combustion reactions come to equilibrium, a
wide variety of major and minor species will be present.
• For example, the combustion of methane in air will yield, in addition to
the major products of carbon dioxide and water, the minor side reaction
products carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides.
 Incomplete Combustion

• Incomplete combustion occurs when there isn't enough

oxygen to allow the fuel (usually a hydrocarbon) to react
completely with the oxygen to produce carbon dioxide and
water, also when the combustion is quenched by a heat
sink such as a solid surface or flame trap.
• When a hydrocarbon burns in air, the reaction will yield
carbon dioxide, water, carbon monoxide, pure carbon (soot
or ash) and various other compounds such as nitrogen
oxides.
• The quality of combustion can be improved by design of
combustion devices, such as burners and internal
combustion engines.
 Air to fuel ratio
• Air-fuel ratio (AFR) is the mass ratio of air to fuel present
during combustion. When all the fuel is combined with all the
free oxygen, typically within a vehicle's combustion chamber,
the mixture is chemically balanced and this AFR is called the
stoichiometric mixture (often abbreviated to stoich).
• In industrial fired heaters, power plant steam generators, and
large gas-fired turbines, the more common term is percent
excess combustion air. For example, excess combustion air of
15 percent means that 15 percent more than the required
stoichiometric air is being used.
 Combustion Efficiency and Excess Air
Combustion efficiency is a calculation of how well your
equipment is burning a specific fuel, shown in percent.

• To ensure complete combustion of the fuel used,

combustion chambers are supplied with excess air.
• Excess air increase the amount of oxygen and the
probability of combustion of all fuel.
• When fuel and oxygen in the air are in perfectly balance the
combustion is said to be stoichiometric
• The combustion efficiency will increase with increased
excess air, until the heat loss in the excess air is larger than
the heat provided by more efficient combustion.
 Cont…
Typical excess air to achieve highest efficiency
for different fuels are
• 5 - 10% for natural gas
• 5 - 20% for fuel oil
• 15 - 60% for coal
• Carbon dioxide - CO2 - is a product of the
combustion and the content in the flue gas is
an important indication of the combustion
efficiency.
 Cont…
Typical combustion process efficiencies can be
summarized as
• Home fireplace: 10 - 40 %
• Space heater: 50 - 80 %
• Gas boiler: 70 - 80 %
• Oil burner heating system: 70 - 85 %
• High efficiency gas or oil condensing furnace:
85 - 95 %
 Exhaust of combustion

• Exploration and combustion activities result in

the release or emission of several greenhouse
gases, notably carbon dioxide and methane.
Small quantities of other gases such as the
hydrocarbons propane and butane, and other
products of fuel combustion are also released.
• Air Pollution by means of Carbon dioxide
– Carbon dioxide absorbs and holds heat that
is given off by the Earth
– With increased carbon dioxide levels more
heat is being held in
 Hydrogen Combustion
• Hydrogen can be combusted to
produce energy, however, because
of its high burning temperature,
hydrogen combustion in a
conventional engine would produce
very high levels of NOx.
• There are some ways to decrease
NOx emissions already available.
• For instance, catalytic burners can
reduce the burning temperature and
some burners use diffusion for low
NOx burning of hydrogen.
 Applications
• Humans have been making practical use of combustion for thousands of
years.
• Cooking food and heating homes have long been two major applications
of the combustion reaction.
• With the development of the steam engine by Denis Papin, Thomas
Savery, Thomas Newcomen, and others at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, however, a new use for combustion was found:
performing work. Those first engines employed the combustion of some
material, usually coal, to produce heat that was used to boil water. The
steam that was produced was then able to move pistons (sliding valves)
and drive machinery. That concept is essentially the same one used today
to operate fossil-fueled electrical power plants.
• Before long, inventors found ways to use steam engines in transportation,
especially in railroad engines and steam ships. However, it was not until
the discovery of a new type of fuel—gasoline and its chemical relatives—
and a new type of engine—the internal combustion engine—that modern
methods of transportation became common. Today, most forms of
transportation depend on the combustion of a hydrocarbon fuel (a
compound of hydrogen and carbon) such as gasoline, kerosene, or diesel
oil to produce the energy that drives pistons and moves vehicles.
How is your environment affected by combustion?

• Working in your groups, List the ways

combustion affects the environment.