Abstract:
Ammonia cofiring ratio (
RNH3) is an important parameter affecting the carbon dioxide (CO
2) reduction of coal-fired units. Although high
RNH3 is beneficial to CO
2 reduction, it may lead to significant increase in nitrogen oxide (NO
x) emissions, which is going to hinder the application of ammonia/coal cofiring technology. In order to investigate the influence mechanism of
RNH3 on NO emission, a chemical reactor network model of one-dimensional furnace is developed to investigate the influences of
RNH3 on the NO production and reduction reaction pathways of NH
3 by means of detailed chemical kinetic model. The predicted results replicate the experimentally observed trend of NO emission that first increases and then decreases with the increase of
RNH3. It is shown that, under lower
RNH3 the concentrations of HNO/N increase with the increase of
RNH3 which leads to increased NO emission. Under higher
RNH3, however, most of the H/OH radicals are consumed by the dehydrogenation reactions of NH
3, which consequently inhibits the NO production reactions between the HNO/N and H/OH radicals, thus leading to reduced NO emission. Therefore, the root mechanism of the increase-then-decrease trend of NO emission with the increase of
RNH3 is attributed to the competition to the H/OH radicals between the initial and final steps of the NO production reaction pathway.