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A 300-MW e anthracite and down-fired boiler equipped with swirl burners, which was retrofitted with the previously proposed deep-air-staging combustion technology to reduce particularly high NO x emissions, still suffered from high carbon content in fly ash (despite this content being slightly lower than that before retrofit) on basis of significant NO x reduction. To comprehensively produce a high-burnout and low-NO x setting, a novel combustion technology was proposed in which relative to the axis of the primary air duct, the axes of the inner and outer secondary air ducts of the swirl burner shift away from the furnace center, and this technology is called an eccentric-swirl-secondary-air combustion technology. The coaxial symmetrical arrangements of primary and secondary air ducts for traditional swirl burners are broken. Full-scale industrial measurements under original, deep-air-staging and eccentric-swirl-secondary-air combustion technologies with respect to different loads (i.e., 180, 250, and 300 MW e ) were carried out to compare and analyze the validity of and improvement offered by the eccentric-swirl-secondary-air combustion technology. Under different boiler loads, especially at low and middle loads, compared with original and deep-air-staging combustion technologies, eccentric-swirl-secondary-air combustion technology markedly extends the penetration depth of coal/air flow and recirculation regions below arches. The thermal resistance between primary coal/air flow and high-temperature flue gas at the furnace center is reduced further, and the ignition of pulverized coal is timelier. The heating gradient in the burner outlet zone is maintained throughout, and the flame fullness in the primary combustion zone increases. The above three aspects contribute to pulverized coal burnout. Similar to deep-air-staging combustion technology, a low-oxygen and strong reducing atmosphere was formed in the primary combustion zone to reduce NO x formation due to the introduction of overfire air. Compared with deep-air-staging combustion technology, for the eccentric-swirl-secondary-air combustion technology, the air staged combustion in the furnace is improved further, and pulverized coal combustion in the primary combustion zone is more well distributed, which is beneficial to further reducing NO x emissions. The results of low-NO x and high-efficiency performance show that compared with the original boiler, NO x emissions and carbon content in fly ash for the boiler with the eccentric-swirl-secondary-air combustion technology are significantly reduced by above 42% and 32.5 to 20.7% at loads of 180, 250 and 300 MW e , respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents experimental research on cold flow, combustion characteristics, and NO x emissions of a swirl burner with air staging. The aim of the research is to investigate the influence of primary air cone length on the swirl burner performance. Cold flow air experiments on a centrally fuel-rich swirl burner with an over-fire air ratio of 25% were performed, and it was observed that when the dimensionless primary-air cone length (i.e., L p / L i , L p and L i respectively denoting the primary-air cone length in the cold-modeling experiments and inner secondary-air cone length) increases from 0 to 0.75, the diameter and length of the recirculation zone reduces from 0.91 d and 1.51 d to 0.68 d and 0.57 d , respectively. An investigation was conducted in a 0.5 MW laboratory furnace in order to optimize the primary-air cone length of a centrally fuel-rich swirl burner. The flame stability, performance of ignition, and burnout are significantly improved by decreasing the primary-air cone length. The NO x emissions measured at the furnace exit with a cone length L p / L i  = 0 decreased by 50.3% compared to those measured with a cone length L p / L i =  1.0. Based on the evaluation of flame stability, performance of the ignition, burnout, and low NO x emissions, the optimum value of primary-air cone length was observed to be L p / L i  = 0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new combustion system has been applied to a 300 MW e down-fired boiler with swirl burners to reduce NO x emissions. The unit provided the introduction of overfire air (OFA) and a decrease in the flow area of the inner and outer secondary air ducts of the swirl burners. Industrial experiments on the retrofitted boiler were performed at different loads. Full-scale measurements of the flue gas temperature distribution in the burner outlet region, the furnace temperature distributions measured by a pyrometer and the local mean gas species concentrations in the region near the sidewall were made at loads of 180, 250, and 300 MW e . The results show that the ignition distance increased with decreasing load, especially as the load decreased from 250 MW e to 180 MW e . At three different loads, the retrofitted coal/air flow could be all ignited in time at a distance in the range of 0.6–1.4 m from the burner outlet. Compared with the original combustion system, the ignition distance of the coal/air flow was significantly reduced at a load of 300 MW e . In addition, at a load of 300 MW e , the temperature of the boiler hopper was much higher than that at loads of 180 MW e and 250 MW e . Compared with the original combustion system, the upper furnace temperature decreased slowly with increasing measurement height at a load of 300 MW e after the retrofit. Measurements of the O 2 and CO concentrations in the region near the sidewall indicate that the fullness degree of the coal flame in the furnace at different loads was different. After the retrofit, the reheat steam temperatures reached the design temperature of 541 °C at loads of 180 MW e and 250 MW e , and the average reheat steam temperatures increased by approximately 13 °C. Compared with the original combustion system, a significant NO x reduction (more than 40%) at different loads was achieved without increasing the levels of unburnt carbon in the fly ash. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]