Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Research Paper

CFD investigation on combustion and NOx emission characteristics in a

600 MW wall-fired boiler under high temperature and strong reducing
atmosphere
Yongbo Du a, Chang’an Wang a, Qiang Lv a, Debo Li b, Hu Liu c, Defu Che a,⇑
a
State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, PR China
b
Electric Power Research Institute of Guangdong Power Grid Corporation, Guangzhou 510080, PR China
c
Electric Power Research Institute of Huadian, Hangzhou 310030, PR China

h i g h l i g h t s

High temperature and strong reducing combustion was realized in unity boiler.

Deep air stage and mixing O2 to secondary were used in combination.

NOx was reduced by about 60% via the proposed method.

Simulation results agrees well to the industrial test.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, a modified air staging technology for pulverized coal boilers was proposed, to notably
Received 12 March 2017 reduce NOx emission by creating a zone with high temperature and strong reducing atmosphere
Revised 9 June 2017 (HT&SRA) in furnace. Here, the conventional air staging technology was employed in combination with
Accepted 19 July 2017
increasing O2 fraction of feeding gas in primary zone (O2.p). The new technology was numerically verified
Available online 22 July 2017
in a 600 MW wall-fired boiler and the temperature distribution, the char burnout and the effectiveness in
NOx reduction were mainly examined. The results indicate that a sufficiently low stoichiometric O2 ratio
Keywords:
in primary zone (SRp) is essential to reduce NOx emission by increasing O2.p. The effectiveness in NOx
Pulverized coal boiler
Numerical simulation
reduction by increasing O2.p also depends greatly on the injection position of over fire air (OFA). Under
NOx reduction the condition of 0.7 SRp and a relatively high OFA position, the NOx emission could be reduced by
Air staging 27.6% when O2.p is increased from 21% to 33%, while the incomplete combustion heat loss only shows
High temperature a slight rise. In addition, the NOx reduction ratio could reach to >60% through the proposed low-NOx com-
Strong reducing atmosphere bustion technology compared with the current operation condition.
Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
In China, the NOx emission from coal-fired power plants have
resulted in many serious environmental problems and worsened
human health over past few years [1]. As a response to these
urgent issues, the regulation against NOx emission from thermal
power plants was revised to be more strict in 2014. According to
the latest regulation, the limitation of NOx emission from pulver-
ized coal boilers is 100 mg/Nm3 (at 6% O2) [2–4]. To meet such a
strict emission standard, the lower-NOx combustion technology
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: dfche@mail.xjtu.edu.cn (D. Che).
and the selective catalytic reduction (SCR) technology are usually
employed in combination.
Although SCR technology is considered as the most effective
approach for NOx reduction in power plants [5], there still exists
a series of unresolved issues involved in operation of SCR. The cost
of catalysts and reductants is quite high. The working lifetime of
catalysts is short and it could cause secondary pollution to discard
the deactivated catalysts [6]. Furthermore, the operation of SCR
could accelerate the formation of ammonium bisulfate, which
may result in the blocking of air preheater [7]. In addition, the
gas temperature in SCR equipment is influenced by the load varia-
tion of boiler and it is quite possible that the catalyst works outside
of the optimum condition [8,9]. As explained above, SCR technol-
ogy is not a reliable long-term strategy for NOx emission control.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.07.147
1359-4311/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
408 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418
Hence, it is preferred to develop low-NOx combustion technology
to further reduce the initial production of NOx within furnace. If
the production of NOx within furnace is low enough, the SCR could
be disused or replaced by selective non-catalytic reduction, or at
least a layer of catalyst can be saved in SCR system. These improve-
ments are all favorable in terms of cost saving and environmental
conservation.
The combustion technology of air staging along furnace height
is the most widely used method to reduce NOx production because
of the simple structure and facile air distribution system [1,8,9],
and it has also been extensively studied both experimentally and
numerically during the past few decades. Currently, the air staging
technology mainly includes over fire air (OFA) system [10–12],
separate over fire air (SOFA) system [13–15], close coupled over
fire air (CCOFA) and SOFA system [1] and multi-group SOFA system
[2,16], while the former three technologies have been widely used
in practice. The previous studies are mainly focused on the influ-
ence of OFA ratios, OFA positions and OFA injection angles on
NOx reduction within furnace. Generally, the initial NOx production
can be reduced by 40–65% through air staging for bituminous coal
fired boilers, and the final NOx concentration at furnace outlet is
usually 180–300 mg/Nm3 [10,14,17]. However, the reduction effect
of ordinary air staging technology on lean coal and anthracite com-
bustion is much weaker, and the NOx outlet concentration is usu-
ally >400 mg/Nm3 [1,2,11]. Overall, the regulation of NOx
emission cannot be achieved only by the existing air staging com-
bustion but has to rely on SCR. In addition, the emission standard
of NOx may be tightened to 50 mg/Nm3 in the next few years.
Therefore, it is significant and inevitable to further develop low-
NOx combustion technology.
During the combustion of pulverized coal, it has been proved
very beneficial for NOx reduction to increase temperature in fuel-
rich zone [18–20]. On this basis, the method of high temperature
and strong reducing atmosphere (HT&SRA) combustion was put
forward to further reduce NOx production in our previous work
[21]. It is suggested that raising combustion temperature can lead
to a substantial reduction of NOx while the air stoichiometric ratio
of reducing zone is 0.7 [21]. However, the previous study was
conducted just on a lab-scale furnace, and HT&SRA combustion
can be realized by controlling temperature with electric heater
[18,19,21]. Obviously, it is very difficult to raise the combustion
temperature under such a lower air stoichiometric ratio for pulver-
ized coal boilers in power plants, and report on the application of
HT&SRA combustion is still vacant. Hence, investigation on con-
verting the HT&SRA combustion technology to practical use is very
necessary and of great value, which makes this clean coal technol-
ogy with more realistic significance and development prospect.
In this paper, a new air distribution mode which aims to build a
HT&SRA in pulverized coal boiler was proposed. The new combus-
tion technology is implemented in pulverized coal boilers by
adopting deep air staging combustion, increasing the O2 fraction
of feeding gas in the primary zone (O2.p, for short) by mixing some
pure O2 into the air, and optimizing SOFA arrangement. The deep
air staging can keep the primary zone under a strong reducing
atmosphere, and increasing O2.p can accelerate the combustion of
pulverized coal, to effectively raise combustion temperature in pri-
mary zone even O2 is insufficient. The employment of SOFA means
that OFA is kept quite far from the coal injector, which can ensure
the NOx generated in burner zone to be reduced adequately by pro-
viding a longer residence time in the reducing zone. The proposed
combustion method was investigated by the cost-effective compu-
tational fluid dynamics (CFD) to study the feasibility on utility boi-
ler. The effects of increasing O2.p on NOx reduction and char
burnout were inspected under various conditions with different
OFA positions and OFA ratios. This work can offer guidance for
the development of the low-NOx combustion technology, which
is crucial to decrease the NOx emission and lessen many troubles
involved in the denitration process for power plant.
2. Modelling methodology
2.1. Physical model
The simulations were performed based on a 600 MW wall-fired
boiler, with the configuration and size parameters illustrated in
Fig. 1. The details of the arrangement, internal structure and air
distribution of each burners and OFA nozzles are available in our
previous work [1,2].
2.2. Numerical analysis
The turbulent flow, combustion, heat transfer, particles motion,
and NOx formation in the furnace were numerically simulated by
commercial CFD software FLUENT (ANSYS, Inc., USA). The grid
independence was firstly tested, and the total grid number of
1,467,228, and 1,904,070 was employed in the primary calculation.
As shown in Fig. 2, the gas temperature distribution along furnace
height computed based on these two number of cells are almost
the same, thus the mesh system of 1,467,228 cells was employed
in this following study.
The SIMPLE algorithm was adopted to formulate the time aver-
aged conservation equation for mass, momentum and energy. The
standard k-e model was used to describe the turbulent flow. The P-
1 model was chosen to model the radiation heat transfer, and the
number of bands was set to zero, indicating only gray radiation
was modeled [22]. The absorption coefficient was calculated by
the wsggm-domain-based approach. The particle emissivity was
assumed to be 0.9 and the scattering factor was 0.6. The two-
competing-reactions model and kinetics/diffusion-limited model
were used to respectively calculate the devolatilization rate and
char oxidation rate, with the detailed parameters shown in Table 1.
The O2 concentrations of feeding gas injected from different noz-
zles were different, and then the species transport model was
adopted to make the boundary condition setting convenient, with
turbulence-chemistry interaction described by the finite-rate/
eddy-dissipation model. The gas phase combustion of volatiles
was simulated by a 4-step global reaction mechanism with the fol-
lowing 4 reactions included [23].
CHy Ox þ ð0:5 þ 0:25y  0:5xÞO2 ! CO þ 0:5yH2 O ðR1Þ
CO þ 0:5O2 $ CO2 ðR2Þ
CO þ H2 O $ CO2 þ H2 ðR3Þ
H2 þ 0:5O2 $ H2 O ðR4Þ
As the presence of NOx makes negligible influence to the calcu-
lation of combustion solution, NOx calculation was executed as a
post-processing procedure based on the results of flow, tempera-
ture field, and species distributions. The prompt-NO formation
was not taken into account since its contribution is limited in
coal-fired systems [23,24]. Hence, the NOx formation was calcu-
lated based on the thermal-NO [25] and fuel-NO mechanisms
[26]. In this study, the fraction of fuel-N in volatile and in char were
determined to be 40% and 60%, respectively, based on the volatile
content of the coal adopted here [27]. For lean coal, it is assumed
that 90% of the volatile-N converts to HCN while the rest directly
forms NO with consideration of the temperature and O2 concentra-
tion near the coal inlet [27–29]. Regarding the char-N, the conver-
sion rate was set to 90% to reflect the incomplete combustion of
char [30]. Then, among the released char-N, it is assumed that
30% of that directly conveys to NO, and the rest forms HCN [30,31].
 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418 409

Fig. 1. Schematic configurations (a) and mesh system (b) of the wall-fired pulverized coal boiler.

Table 2
Proximate, ultimate analysis of the coal (ar) and coal particle diameter distribution.

Parameter Value
Proximate analysis [%] V 10.38
FC 61.52
A 22.22
M 5.88
Ultimate analysis [%] C 64.25
H 3.55
O 2.62
N 1.15
S 0.33
Qnet [MJ/kg] 24.36
Particle diameter distribution [mm] Min/max diameters 10/200
Mean diameter 57.5
R-R spread parameter 1.11

Fig. 2. Gas temperature along furnace height for grid independence test.
2.3. Simulation conditions
The properties of the lean coal fired in this boiler are presented
in Table 2, and the coal particle is assumed to obey the Rosin-
Rammler algorithm. All the simulation cases were based on the
100% BMCR operation with coal feed rate of 62.3 kg/s. Here, sec-
ondary air is defined as the gas injected only in primary zone after
pulverized coal ignition, which excludes the OFA. Hence, the feed-
ing gas can be divided into primary air, secondary air, and OFA. The
stoichiometric ratio (SR) is defined as the ratio of the amount of O2
actually supplied to that for stoichiometric combustion. The
parameters SR1, SR2, and SROFA represent SR of primary air, sec-
ondary air, and OFA, respectively. SRp represents SR in the primary
zone, which is to the sum of SR1 and SR2. SRb represents SR in the
burnout zone, namely the total excess O2 coefficient, and it was
1.14 in all cases.

Table 1
Parameters for determining the devolatilization and char combustion rates.

Reaction A (s1) E (J/kmol) Weighting factor

Devolatilization First rate 2.0e + 5 1.046e + 8 0.3
Second rate 1.3e + 7 1.674e + 8 1
A (s/m) E (J/kmol) Diffusion constant
Char combustion 0.002 7.9e + 7 5e-12
410 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418

In several simulation cases, some pure O2 should be mixed in

the feeding gas to enhance O2.p, while pure O2 should be mixed
only to secondary air rather than primary air. Firstly, enhancing
O2 concentration in primary air could result in pulverized coal
more likely to ignite autogenously in the pipe. Then, enhancing
O2 concentration in primary air would result in a decrease of the
flux if SR1 remains the same, which is unfavorable for conveying
pulverized coal. Hence, the composition of primary air and OFA
was the conventional air and SR1 was fixed to 0.22 under present
investigation. Besides, the moisture in coal was added to the pri-
mary air in simulation. Finally, the mass flow rate of primary air
was 120.22 kg/s with the composition of 3.05 wt% water vapor,
22.59 wt% O2 in N2 as the balance. The gas temperature is 363 K
for primary air and 608 K for the rest of feeding gas. The wall tem-
perature was set to be 720 K, which was about 80 K higher than the
average of steam temperature in membrane wall, and the emissiv-
ity was supposed to be 0.8. The air distributions of all the cases dif-
fer from each other in three aspects, namely SRp, O2.p and OFA
Fig. 3. Comparison of measured and calculated average temperature in some cross-
position, with the details presented in Table 3. sections.

3. Results and discussion

Table 4
Comparison of some measured values and calculated results at the furnace outlet.
3.1. Validation of the study
Parameters NOx concentration/mg Nm3 Carbon content
In order to ensure the accuracy of the CFD model used here, the (6% O2) in fly ash (%)

numerical calculation result was compared with some measured Measured value 508 5.04
data reported in a previous paper [1], and the data were obtained Calculated value 506 4.28

based on the operation condition of Case 0 in Table 3. The temper-

ature test was conducted by the infrared thermometer TR630
which could realize the non-contact temperature measurement.
Here, the gas temperature was tested through fire holes, which
were distributed in both the left wall and the right wall of furnace.
Fig. 3 shows that the calculated results of average temperatures are
in good coincidence with the measured values, and the maximum
deviation is only 6.1% for the location slightly below OFA nozzles.
The calculated results of NOx concentration and carbon content
in fly ash at furnace outlet also well agree with the measured val-
ues, as shown in Table 4. Consequently, the calculation models
described above are reasonable for current work.
3.2. Effects of HT&SRA on the combustion and NOx production within
furnace
According to Table 3, O2.p was raised from 21% of the conven-
tional air to 27%, 33%, and 39%, with SR1 and OFA position respec-
tively remained at 0.7 and layer 4, which correspond to case 1 to
case 4. The average temperature, O2 mole fraction and NOx mass-
flow rate at the horizontal cross-sections along furnace height of
the four cases are depicted in Fig. 4. Fig. 5 shows the temperature
fields of these four cases, and the presented three horizontal cross-
sections include those at the heights of bottom burners, top burn-
ers and OFA nozzles.
It can be seen from Figs. 4 and 5 that the highest gas tempera-
ture appears near coal inlets for each condition. For case 3 and case
4, temperature at this zone is substantially higher and the flames
from burners adjacent to each other are more closely attached,
which imply the combustion intensification and flame stabiliza-
tion. The average gas temperature in burner block of case 4 is about
400 K higher than that of case 1. This is mainly due to that the gas
feeding rate in primary zone is substantially decreased in case 4
with a constant coal feeding rate [32]. The conditions with higher

Table 3
Detailed information of various cases.

Case SRp O2 mole fraction in Mass flow rate of Gas feeding rate in O2.p (%) SROFA OFA position
secondary air (%) secondary air (kg/s) primary zone (kg/s)
Case 0 0.8 21 307.30 423.86 21 0.34 Layer 1
Case 1 0.7 21 254.32 370.88 21 0.44 Layer 4
Case 2 0.7 31.16 173.47 290.03 27 0.44 Layer 4
Case 3 0.7 44.77 122.98 239.54 33 0.44 Layer 4
Case 4 0.7 64.39 87.77 204.33 39 0.44 Layer 4
Case 5 0.7 21 254.32 370.88 21 0.44 Layer 1
Case 6 0.7 44.77 122.98 239.54 33 0.44 Layer 1
Case 7 0.7 21 254.32 370.88 21 0.44 Layer 2
Case 8 0.7 44.77 122.98 239.54 33 0.44 Layer 2
Case 9 0.7 21 254.32 370.88 21 0.44 Layer 3
Case 10 0.7 44.77 122.98 239.54 33 0.44 Layer 3
Case 11 0.8 21 307.30 423.86 21 0.34 Layer 4
Case 12 0.8 42.21 157.09 273.65 33 0.34 Layer 4
Case 13 0.9 21 360.28 476.84 21 0.24 Layer 4
Case 14 0.9 40.54 191.33 307.89 33 0.24 Layer 4
Case 15 1.0 21 413.26 529.82 21 0.14 Layer 4
Case 16 1.0 39.36 225.65 342.21 33 0.14 Layer 4
 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418 411

Fig. 4. Distributions of average temperatures, O2 mole fraction and NOx mass-flow rate at the horizontal cross-section along the furnace height under different O2.p.

Fig. 5. Temperature distributions in various sections.

O2.p continue to exhibit significant higher temperature until OFA is
injected in furnace. For case 3 and case 4, the average temperatures
of horizontal cross-sections can attain to >1800 K in the quite large
area of furnace height less than 35 m. Such a high temperature
field is far different from the condition of conventional air
combustion.
The heat flux distributions at water cooled wall for the four
cases are shown in Fig. 6. It can be observed that heat flux reveals
an obvious increase with enhancing O2.p, and it should be definitely
resulted from the higher temperature within furnace [33–35].
Moreover, the heat capacity of the flue gas which participates in
the heat transfer per unit time is lower as the mass flow of feeding
gas gets reduced. Therefore, from the top burner the temperature
decreases along furnace height more rapidly for case 3 and case
4, as Fig. 4 shows.
Fig. 7 depicts the O2 distributions within furnace of these four
cases, and it can be found that O2 mole fraction in burner zone is
obviously higher for case 3 and case 4. However, due to the higher
temperature and O2 fraction, the following combustion is more
intense for case 3 and case 4, which lead to a more rapid consump-
tion of O2. Additionally, the gas flow rates of case 3 and case 4 are
smaller, which also magnifies the drop of O2 fraction along the fur-
nace height. Hence, the O2 mole fractions of case 3 and case 4 have
dropped down to almost equal to that of case 1 at the furnace
height of 30 m which is not far from the top burner, as shown in
Fig. 4. Overall, O2 mole fractions in most reducing zone are below
3% for all the four cases. The flue gas is under quite a strong reduc-
ing condition with such a low O2 concentration.
The NO distributions within furnace of the four cases are exhib-
ited in Fig. 8. The regions with high NO concentrations are always
412 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418

Fig. 6. Heat flux distributions at water cooled wall.

Fig. 7. O2 distributions in various sections.

in vicinity to the coal injectors. NO at this area of case 3 and case 4
is denser than that of case 1, because the local temperatures and O2
concentrations are both higher [24,33,36]. Given the different mass
flow of feeding gas for these four cases, the parameter of NOx
massflow-rate through cross-sections within furnace is more con-
victive than the local concentration to describe the formation and
reduction of NOx among various cases. As shown in Fig. 4, the
massflow-rate of NOx in burner zone are in the sequence of case
4 > case 3 > case 2 > case 1, which is consistent with the descrip-
tion in Fig. 8.
In the subsequent reducing zone, NO is mainly reduced by char
through R5 and R6, the following two global reactions [37,38]. The
presence of CO could promote NO reduction, but the effect on
O2/N2 combustion is tiny [37]. Hence, it is acceptable to neglect
the influence of CO in NO calculation. For the heterogeneous reac-
tion of NO reduced by char, the reaction rate calculated from R7 is
dramatically increased with rising temperature. This has also been
verified experimentally in a previous work [20,37]. Meanwhile,
this reaction can also be enhanced by the provided higher NO con-
centration in case 3 and case 4. Finally, for example, the rate of NO
reduced by char at the furnace height of 30 m for case 3 is about 7
times of that for case 1. The formation of thermal-NO would be
accelerated by high temperature, but the influence is relatively
small on account of the low O2 concentration in reducing zone
[25]. Besides, the homogeneous reactions of NO reduced by HCN
and NH3 are also included in the fuel-NO calculation model. How-
ever, the mole concentrations of HCH and NH3 are so low in reduc-
ing zone, characteristically about one percent of NO, that these
reactions are turned unimportant. Moreover, factoring in the abun-
dant unburnt char in reducing zone caused by quite a deficient SR
in primary zone, the heterogeneous reduction by char should be
the critical influence on NO. In addition to these great advantages
in reaction rate for case 3 and case 4, the reduced gas flow in reduc-
ing zone could bring both a higher concentration of unburnt char
and a longer resistance of flue gas [33,35]. Therefore, the NOx
massflow-rates decrease along furnace height more significantly
for case 3 and case 4, and the order for these four cases gets reverse
near OFA nozzles as shown in Fig. 4.
1
NO þ C ! N2 þ CO ðR5Þ
2
2NO þ C ! N2 þ CO2 ðR6Þ
R ¼ AeE=RT PNO ðR7Þ
 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418 413

Fig. 8. NO distributions in various sections.

Some parameters in simulation results are presented in Table 5.
The total heat flow to wall increases obviously with O2.p, because of
the reinforced radiation. This could lead to a significant decrease in
the total enthalpy increase of gas within furnace. Therefore,
although the flux of flue gas at outlet is smaller in case 3 and case
4, the gas temperature at outlet also decreases. In addition to the
total heat flow, the maximal heat flux to wall also increases largely,
as exhibited in Fig. 6 and Table 5. For case 4, the maximum of heat
flux increases by 50% compared to that of case 1. The carbon con-
tent in fly ash decreases with increasing O2.p. This should be clearly
attributed to the rise of temperature at primary zone [20,33,34].
However, the total incomplete combustion heat loss shows a con-
trary tendency, and the unburnt carbon in bottom ash plays an
important role. For case 3 and case 4, the particle motion in furnace
is affected by the reduced gas flux, which causes the hopper bot-
tom trapping more particles with a considerable proportion of
unburnt carbon contained, and a similar result was obtained by
Nikolopoulos et al. [22,32]. Thereby, the thermal efficiency suffers
a decrease with an increase in O2,p, but the impact is quite small as
Table 5 shows. On the whole, the incomplete combustion heat loss
of about 3% is acceptable for boiler firing lean coal.
Besides of the conventional mg/Nm3 for NOx concentration, the
unit of mg/MJ, which is emission per the lower heating value of
feeding coals, was also introduced to reasonably represent the
NOx emission among various cases with different gas fluxes. It
can be clearly observed that NOx emission decreases with
enhancing O2.p, and the reduction rate can reach to >40% for case
4 compared with case 1. Thereby, it can be concluded that NOx
reduction in utility boiler is achieved by increasing the combustion
temperature in reducing zone with a low SRp. Moreover, compared
to the value of 128.26 mg/MJ (converted from 506 mg/Nm3, in
Table 4) for practical operation condition, the NOx emission is
reduced by 58.2% and 66.7% for case 3 and case 4, respectively.
Consequently, the HT&SRA combustion technology is realized in
pulverized boiler by mixing some pure O2 to the secondary air
under a low SRp, and the effectiveness in NOx reduction is posi-
tively correlated with O2.p.
3.3. Influence of OFA position on the effectiveness of increasing O2.p
In order to understand the effect of increasing O2.p on combus-
tion and NOx production under different OFA injection positions,
OFA was set to be injected from four different heights, respectively.
The result of the case with 33% O2.p was compared to that of con-
ventional air combustion under each OFA position. That is, the case
1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 were employed in this part. Figs. 9–11 respec-
tively depict the distributions of average temperature, O2 mole
fraction and NOx massflow-rate of these eight cases. Some param-
eters in simulation results are shown in Table 6. In each group, the
average temperatures of cross-sections for the two cases are very
close after OFA is fed, as shown in Fig. 9. Hence, the higher temper-
ature area for the case with 33% O2.p diminishes with OFA injected
earlier. This could dwindle the gap in radiation heat flux between
the two cases in each group. Therefore, the gaps in total heat flow
and outlet temperature between the two cases in each group
become smaller with OFA moved down, as exhibited in Table 6.
Moving the OFA upward can raise furnace outlet temperature,
which is valid for both the cases of air combustion and that with
33% O2.p. This is clearly due to the retarded combustion in burnout
zone, which indicates the flame getting closer to outlet [1]. Besides,

Table 5
Some parameters in simulation results of various cases.

Parameter Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4

Outlet average temperature (K) 1398 1380 1359 1351
Total heat flow in furnace (MWth) 758.7 808.9 845.3 875.3
Maximal heat flux at wall (kW/m2) 447.4 521.9 574.0 669.0
Carbon content in fly ash (%) 5.81 4.61 4.50 4.35
Char conversion in bottom ash (%) 62.52 60.14 60.21 63.74
Incomplete combustion heat loss (%) 2.57 2.78 2.90 3.13
NOx emission (mg/Nm3, 6% O2) 296.6 285.4 285.3 257.7
NOx emission (mg/MJ) 74.1 60.6 53.6 42.7
414 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418

Fig. 9. Temperature distributions along the furnace height under different OFA position with O2.p respectively at 21% and 33%.

Fig. 10. O2 distributions along the furnace height under different OFA position with O2.p respectively at 21% and 33%.

the retarded combustion also results in a decline of total heat flow
for the air combustion cases. As for the cases with 33% O2.p, the
heat transfer in burnout zone is suppressed by the retarded com-
bustion, while the reducing zone with a very high temperature is
enlarged by the retarded injection of OFA. Finally, the total heat
flow is slightly affected. The maximum of heat flux is almost unaf-
fected by the OFA position, as it appears at burner zone.
As also shown in Table 6, moving OFA down could decrease the
carbon content in fly ash, since the resistance time was prolonged
in burnout zone [14,19]. As shown in Fig. 10, O2 mol fractions at
 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418 415

Fig. 11. NOx massflow-rate along the furnace height under different OFA position with O2.p respectively at 21% and 33%.

Table 6
Some parameters in simulation results of various cases.

Parameter Case 5 Case 6 Case 7 Case 8 Case 9 Case 10 Case 1 Case 3

Outlet average temperature (K) 1347 1334 1353 1338 1376 1344 1398 1359
Total heat flow within furnace (MWth) 791.6 856.6 776.3 853.2 771.2 848.7 758.7 845.3
Maximal heat flux at wall (kW/m2) 456.4 582.6 436.3 577.2 433.2 588.5 447.4 574.0
Carbon content in fly ash (%) 2.59 3.21 2.70 3.58 3.98 3.92 5.81 4.50
Char conversion in bottom ash (%) 64.27 61.94 62.29 64.51 62.57 63.48 62.52 60.22
Incomplete combustion heat loss (%) 1.60 2.30 1.61 2.51 2.01 2.70 2.57 2.90
NOx emission (mg/Nm3, 6% O2) 361.5 461.5 338.1 394.1 318.2 330.4 296.6 285.3
NOx emission (mg/MJ) 90.8 86.8 85.9 74.1 80.2 61.2 74.1 53.6

the end of primary zone of the two cases are almost equal and very
low in the group of layer 4, which indicates the combustion in pri-
mary zone is quite sufficient. However, with OFA injected early, the
O2 mole fraction at the end of primary zone increases obviously,
and the growth for the case with 33% O2.p is bigger than that with
21% O2.p. The combustion in primary zone of the case with higher
O2.p seems to be affected more with the OFA injectors moved down.
Therefore, the promotion on burnout by prolonging resistance time
in burnout zone is counteracted more for the case with 33% O2.p.
Thereby, the shift of OFA position causes less influence on the
carbon content in fly ash for the case with 33% O2.p, and the incom-
plete combustion heat loss presents a same tendency.
As shown in Fig. 11, NOx massflow-rates decrease rapidly in the
reducing zone for all cases, and the decline is larger for the cases
with 33% O2.p as explained in the previous section. Hence, moving
down OFA is unfavorable to NOx reduction, especially for the cases
with higher O2.p. For the group of layer 4, a NOx reduction ratio of
27.6% is realized through enhancing O2.p from 21% to 33%, whereas
the ratio is only 4.4% for the condition of layer 1. Consequently, the
effectiveness in NOx reduction of HT&SRA combustion technology
depends greatly on the OFA position, and a large enough reducing
zone is crucial.
3.4. Influence of SRp on the effectiveness of increasing O2.p
In this part, SRp was set to 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0 with OFA position
kept at layer 4, and O2.p of 21% and 33% were applied in simulation,
which correspond to the case 1, 3, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 in
Table 4. The suitability of enhancing O2.p in air staging combustion
with different staging depths was then investigated by analyzing
the results. The distributions of average temperature, O2 mole frac-
tion and NOx massflow-rate in cross-sections are displayed in
Figs. 12–14, and some parameters in simulation results are shown
in Table 7.
As shown in Fig. 12, for cases of conventional air combustion,
temperature at primary zone decreases slightly as SRp increases,
which agrees with some previous studies [1,39]. The influence of
SRp on temperature for the cases with 33% O2.p is bigger than that
for conventional air combustion, which makes the temperature
divergence in primary zone between the two cases in each group
getting smaller with increasing SRp.
With increasing SRp, more heat is released from the coal due to
a more full combustion, thus the heat flux to wall increases obvi-
ously, as the data in Table 7. Consequently, the temperature at out-
let decreases obviously for the cases of conventional air
416 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418

Fig. 12. Temperature distributions along the furnace height under different SRp with O2.p respectively at 21% and 33%.

Fig. 13. O2 distributions along the furnace height under different SRp with O2.p respectively at 21% and 33%.

combustion. As for cases with 33% O2.p, it should be noticed that
more pure O2 is mixed in feeding gas to keep O2.p at 33% with
increasing SRp. This could lead to a reduction in flow rate of the
total feeding gas under the same SRb. For example, under the
condition of 33% O2.p, the massflow-rate of flue gas at furnace out-
let is 521 kg/s for the case with 0.7 SRp, while that is only 466 kg/s
for the 1.0 SRp case. Therefore, although the outlet temperature
increases slightly, the total heat flow to wall gets higher with
increasing SRp, which is consistent with the condition of conven-
tional air combustion. The maximum of heat flux reduces with
 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418 417

Fig. 14. NOx massflow-rate along the furnace height under different SRp with O2.p respectively at 21% and 33%.

Table 7
Some parameters in simulation results of various cases.

Parameter Case 1 Case 3 Case 11 Case 12 Case 13 Case 14 Case 15 Case 16

Outlet average temperature (K) 1398 1359 1358 1361 1317 1368 1280 1373
Total heat flow in furnace (MWth) 758.7 845.3 782.9 871.8 802.7 917.8 835.8 914.1
Maximal heat flux at wall (kW/m2) 447.4 574.0 444.3 571.4 444.6 554.3 449.7 536.3
Carbon content in fly ash (%) 5.81 4.50 4.55 3.63 2.37 3.04 0.30 2.49
Char conversion in bottom ash (%) 62.52 60.21 75.44 68.35 83.21 74.72 95.42 83.46
Incomplete combustion heat loss (%) 2.57 2.90 1.75 2.31 0.90 1.63 0.13 1.09
NOx emission (mg/Nm3, 6% O2) 296.6 285.3 374.8 441.8 483.0 705.0 587.2 999.5
NOx emission (mg/MJ) 74.1 53.6 95.0 79.3 123.7 121.3 152.0 167.5

increasing SRp for the cases with 33% O2.p, while it is almost
unchanged among the cases of conventional air combustion. These
two rules are consistent with the temperature distribution of the
two groups, respectively.
As shown in Fig. 13, O2 concentration in primary zone obvi-
ously increases with SRp, and the increasement is greater under
the condition of 33% O2.p. Enhancing SRp could facilitate the burn-
out of coal in primary zone, which generally reduces the carbon in
fly and bottom ash, as shown in Table 7, and this rule agrees to
some previous studies [10,13,15,39]. It can also be observed that
as SRp increases, the decrease in carbon content in fly ash is smaller
for cases with 33% O2.p. As analyzed above, the flux of feeding gas
reduces as SRp increases with O2.p kept at 33%. This is adverse for
the mixing of particle and O2, thus the promotion on coal burnout
by increasing SRp is discounted for the 33% O2.p cases.
It can be seen from Fig. 13 that the NOx production in burner
zone increases with SRp, and the rise of O2 concentration in this
area should be the main reason. In the subsequent reducing zone,
the temperature is lower and the O2 concentration is higher for
cases with higher SRp, which are both unfavorable to NOx reduction
[21,39,40]. Furthermore, the burnout of char is promoted by
increasing SRp, which is not beneficial for the destruction of NOx
either [33,41]. Hence, a noticeable increase in NOx emission is
obtained by enhancing SRp. Additionally, under the condition of a
higher O2.p, both the temperature and O2 concentration in reducing
zone are more influenced by SRp. Therefore, with an increase in SRp,
the NOx emission increases more under the condition of 33% O2.p
than that of the conventional air combustion, as shown in Table 5.
Finally, by enhancing O2.p from 21% to 33%, a considerable NOx
reduction rate of 27.6% is achieved for the group of 0.7 SRp,
whereas the reduction is negligible for the group of 0.9 SRp. While
SRp is 1.0, the NOx production is even greater for the case with
higher O2.p. It can be concluded that a low enough SRp is a prereq-
uisite if it is expected to reduce NOx by mixing some pure O2 to the
secondary air.
4. Conclusions
In the present study, the following conclusions can be drawn:
(1) It is feasible to create a high temperature and strong reduc-
ing atmosphere in the primary zone for pulverized coal boi-
ler by mixing some pure O2 into secondary air under a low
SRp. Through this method, the temperature increases signif-
icantly and the O2 concentration is quite low in the primary
418 Y. Du et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering 126 (2017) 407–418
zone to promote the NOx reduction. Furthermore, increases
in total heat flow to wall as well as the corresponding max-
imal heat flux are led to meanwhile.
(2) By enhancing O2.p from 21% to 33% under the condition of 0.7
SRp and a relatively high OFA injecting position, the NOx
emission is successfully reduced by 27.6% with slight rise
in the incomplete combustion heat loss. Besides, the NOx
emission is reduced by >60% through the proposed high
temperature and strong reducing atmosphere combustion
technology compared with the current operation condition.
(3) The effectiveness in NOx reduction of the high temperature
and strong reducing atmosphere combustion technology
depends greatly on the gas residence time in reducing zone.
As such, OFA should not be injected too early into the fur-
nace to achieve a desirable NOx reduction.
(4) The method of mixing some pure O2 into the secondary air
seems to be suitable only for deep air staging combustion.
While SRp is 0.9 or 1.0, enhancing O2.p could not build any
area with high temperature and strong reducing atmo-
sphere, the NOx reduction could not be realized in
consequence.
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge financial support from the National
Key R&D Program of China (2017YFB0602003).
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