To
improve moderate or intense low-oxygen dilution (MILD) combustion
characteristics in oxygen-enriched conditions, this study reported
the design of a nonpremixed air/oxygen jet burner that is different
from a premixed one. Implementing the premixed and nonpremixed air/oxygen
jet burners, the performance of oxygen-enriched natural gas MILD combustion
was numerically investigated under different oxygen concentrations
(19.5–36%) and velocities (47.16–261.18 m/s). The results
show that MILD combustion yields a higher peak temperature and NO
emission when the oxygen concentration is enriched for both burners
due to the lack of desirable mixing of reactants with flue gases resulting
from the reduced oxidizer velocity. Compared to the premixed air/oxygen
jet, the nonpremixed oxygen/air jet reduces the in-furnace maximum
temperature with higher thermal uniformity regardless of the oxygen
concentration and thus the net NO emission at 25, 30.5, and 36% oxygen
concentration is mitigated from 43.3, 73.4, and 112.9 ppm@6%O2 to 29.4, 47.1, and 71.7 ppm@6%O2, respectively,
mainly due to the thermal NO reduction. Unlike the oxygen-enrichment
effect, increasing the oxygen jet velocity while maintaining a fixed
air velocity can further improve oxygen-enriched MILD combustion and
its NO emission behaviors. Overall, the nonpremixed air/oxygen jet
burner can provide low NO emission if combustion air with low oxygen
contents is employed, while the usage of the nonpremixed air/oxygen
jet burner together with high oxygen velocity is suggested to avoid
a high NO emission level in highly oxygen-enriched conditions. Moreover,
the total heat flux enhances as the oxygen concentration is increased,
mainly from the radiative heat transfer enhancement; however, higher
convective and lower radiative heat fluxes are observed in the case
with high oxygen jet velocity.
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