Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling of oxy-fuel combustion technique for power plants

At present, fossil-fuel power plants supply the majority of the world’s demand of electric energy. The environmental and health threats from anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) of these power plants have been considered as one of the main reasons for global climate change. In order to make the existing fossil fuel energy sources more environmentally friendly, a new generation of advanced power plant with increased output and environmental performance is required to be built. Oxy-fuel combustion technique can potentially provide significant opportunities for near-zero emissions from the existing and new-build power plants by capturing and storing the carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels and biomass. To obtain a better understanding of the overall oxy-fuel combustion process, it is important to investigate the effects of oxy-fuel-fired conditions on the combustion characteristics and heat transfer performance as innovations in the energy used. As a first step in developing and validating a computational tool to numerically model combustion of gaseous fuel, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling study has been carried out involving propane combustion with associated chemical reactions, radiative heat transfer, and turbulence. Three different combustion environments that were adopted experimentally in a 100 kW drop tube firing unit, were examined. One air-fired (reference case) and two oxy-fuel-fired cases (21 vol.% O2 for one combustion case (OF21) and 27 vol.% O2 for the other combustion case (OF27)) were investigated. The irreversible singlestep and reversible multi-step reaction mechanisms were considered. The results obtained with the multi-step chemistry mechanism showed improved agreement, particularly in the flame zone. The unburnt fuel in air-fired and OF27 cases was less than that of the OF21 case due to the low oxygen concentration used in the latter combustion case. As a second step of this research program, a comprehensive CFD modelling study was undertaken by integrating the combustion of pulverized dry lignite in several combustion environments. Four different cases were investigated: an air-fired and three different oxy-fuel combustion environments (25 % vol. O2 concentration (OF25), 27 % vol. O2 concentration (OF27), and 29 % vol. O2 concentration (OF29) were considered. The available experimental results from a lab-scale 100 kW firing lignite unit (Chalmers’ furnace) were selected for the validation of these simulations. The findings showed reasonable agreement with the qualitative and quantitative measurements of temperature distribution profiles and species concentration profiles at the most intense combustion locations inside the furnace. Through the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), it is concluded that the resident time, stoichiometry, and recycled flue gas rates are relevant parameters to optimize the design of oxy-fuel furnaces. Under the same oxy-fuel combustion conditions as above, the appropriate mathematical models with the related kinetics parameters were implemented. The purpose was to accurately calculate the temperature distributions, species concentrations (O2, CO2, CO, H2O, and H2), NOx emission concentrations, and the radiation heat transfer. In this step of the modelling investigation, the multi-step chemical reaction mechanisms were conducted on the gas-phase and solid-phase of the coal reaction in one-, two-, and three-step reaction schemes. The predicted results showed a reasonably good agreement against the measured data for all the combustion cases, but in the three-step scheme the results were highly improved, particularly in the flame envelope zone. In the final step of the investigation, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling study has been developed to investigate Victorian brown coal combustion in a 550 MW utility boiler under air-fired and three oxy-fuel-fired scenarios. User-defined functions (UDFs) were written and incorporated into the CFD code in order to calculate the following mathematical models: the PC devolatilization, char burnout, multi-step chemical reactions, mass and heat transfer, carbon in fly-ash, and NOx formation/destruction. A level of confidence of the CFD model was achieved by validating four different parameters of the conventional combustion case. The numerical results of OF29 combustion condition were considerably similar to the reference firing results in terms of gas temperature levels and radiative heat transfer relative to the OF25 and OF27 combustion cases. In addition, a significant increase in the CO2 concentrations and a noticeable decrease in the NOx formation were observed under all oxy-fuel combustion scenarios. This study of oxy-fuel combustion in a large-scale tangentially-fired boiler is important prior to its implementation in real-life.