Oxygen Enriched Combustion System Performance Study

Abstract

The objective of this study is to identify potential industrial applications for which oxygen enriched combustion systems are technically, environmentally and economically feasible and offer significant energy savings and/or productivity improvement, and then to verify the performance of selected systems in research furnaces. Tests of several commercial burner designs have been conducted at scales of 1 x 10^6 Btu/hr and 10 x 10^6 Btu/hr. The burners represent both conventional air fired designs and oxygen/fuel burners designed primarily for very high oxygen levels. The results of these tests indicate that over 50 percent fuel savings can be achieved with oxygen enrichment compared to air under certain conditions. The different burners demonstrated distinct axial wall temperature distributions which changed by varying degrees as the level of oxygen enrichment was increased. NOx emissions increased sharply as the level of oxygen enrichment was increased for conventional air burners up to 35-50 percent oxygen. However, specially designed oxygen/fuel burners showed very low NOx emissions for 35 - 100 percent oxygen. The absolute levels of the NOx emissions also depended on the furnace temperature.