A Low-NOx Burner Prototype Developed for B&W's Advanced Coal Fired Emission Boiler System

Tighter federal regulations on boiler emissions have led boiler manufacturers to explore new designs and techniques to meet legislative requirements. To address these design issues, Babcock & Wilcox, under contract to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), has been leading a team in the development of an advanced coal-fired low-emission boiler system (LEBS). The project objective is to design a new boiler equipped with improved combustion and heat transfer subsystems and advanced environmental control technologies capable of achieving emissions of NOx, SOx, and particulates far below current New Source Performance Standards (NSPS). To define scope, boundaries, specific goals, and objectives, the LEBS generating unit is divided into major subsystems for individual assessment and evaluation. The combustion systems for the LEBS unit, including burners and staging systems, are being designed and evaluated under the NOx subsystem. The objective of the NOx subsystem is to achieve continuous NOx emissions below 0.2 lb NOx/MBtu with a specified design coal, through combustion techniques only, with a further target of 0.1 lb NOx/MBtu using supplementary advanced flue gas cleanup technologies if necessary. To help meet this goal, a coal-fired advanced 10w-NOx burner is being developed. Phase I of the LEBS program began with a thorough review and assessment of potential advanced technologies and techniques. Through engineering analysis, pilot-scale testing, and numerical modeling in Phases I and II, a near full-scale 100 MBtulhr advanced 10w-NOx burner was designed and fabricated. Further experimental testing and numerical modeling has continued to refine the LEBS burner concept. The results of these activities are presented in this paper.