Combustion characteristics of 0.5 MW class oxy-fuel FGR (flue gas recirculation) boiler for CO2 capture

Abstract

A 0.5 MW class oxy-fuel boiler was developed to capture CO2 from exhaust gas. We adopted natural gas as the fuel for industrial boilers and identified characteristics different from those of pulverized coal, which has been studied for power plants. We also examined oxy-fuel combustion without flue gas recirculation (FGR), which is not commonly adopted in power plant boil-ers. Oxy-fuel combustion involves a stretched flame that uniformly heats the combustion chamber. In oxy-natural-gas FGR combustion, water vapor was included in the recirculated gas and the flame was stabilized when the oxygen concentration of the oxidizer was 32% or more. While flame delay was observed at a partial load for oxy-natural-gas FGR combustion, it was not observed for other combustion modes. In oxy-fuel combustion, the flow rate and flame fullness decrease but, except for the upstream region, the temperature near the wall is distributed not lower than that for air combustion because of the effect of gas radiation. For this combustion, while the heat flux is lower than other modes in the upstream region, it is more than 60% larger in the downstream region. When oxy-fuel and FGR combustion were employed in industrial boilers, more than 90% of CO2 was obtained, enabling capture, sequestration, and boiler performance while satisfying exhaust gas regulations.