Burner swirls NO{sub x} away
Cleaner boilers that will help reduce acid rain, photochemical smog and tropospheric ozone are now coming on-line, partly as a result of a new burner design for power-generation boilers based on MIT research and now commercialized under exclusive license to ABB C-E Services Inc. The rapidly stratified flame core (RSFC) burner achieved very large nitrogen oxide reductions of up to 90% with natural gas as fuel, and 70 to 80% when burning pulverized coal and heavy fuel oil, respectively. The RSFC design provides a fuel-rich (oxygen deficient), high-temperature environment early in the flame to allow the chemical conversion of the NO{sub x} precursors to harmless molecular nitrogen. A subsequent lower-temperature, fuel-lean environment, in which the remainder of the air is mixed with the remaining fuel, then ensures complete combustion. Another integral feature of the RSFC burner register is its uniquely shaped refractory throat quarl. The throat collimates the airflow as opposed to the divergent airflow from a traditional burner (bell mouth) nozzle shape. The cylindrical shape tends to enforce stratification.
- OSTI ID:
- 566720
- Journal Information:
- Power Engineering (Barrington), Vol. 101, Issue 12; Other Information: PBD: Nov 1997
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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