Emissions and thermal efficiency investigation of a pressurized submerged combustion evaporator

Abstract

This investigation analyzes the thermal efficiency and pollutant emissions of a pressurized submerged combustion evaporator (PSCE). Experimental results show that our novel PSCE design can reduce NOx emissions to 12 mg/kg with increased submergence depth and CO emissions to 5.56 mg/kg when using an excess air coefficient of < 1. As the excess air coefficient increases from 0.872 to 1.582, NOx emissions increase from 9.18 to 20.16 mg/kg, while CO emissions drop to zero. Therefore, it is the excess air coefficient, rather than the submergence depth, that plays a key role in controlling pollutant emissions. Water evaporation using this apparatus has a gross thermal efficiency of 95.2%.