fuel staging in biomass heating systems a primary measure to reduce nox emissions

• DOI: 10.5071/21steubce2013-2co.4.1
• Publication Date: 2013-01-01
• Authors: Meiller, M.; Jakuttis, M.; Binder, S.; Hornung, A.
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; Biomass; 7. Clean energy

Climate change and the scarcity of fossil fuels require further expansion of the energy production from renewables. Many potential fuels within the range of biogenic residues show physical and chemical characteristics that differ a lot from those of wood. The chemical composition often causes various problems in the process of combustion such as corrosion and high emissions of different pollutants such as nitrogen oxides. That’s why the combustion of many biogenic residues is climate-friendly, but not environmentally friendly. Especially the nitrogen content of biogenic residual materials is often very high, leading to high NOX emissions. Small scale furnaces need effective primary measures for emission control, as secondary measures are too expensive. Therefore the main purpose of the work is to develop an environmentally friendly way of biogenic residues combustion. Moreover an efficient way of partial load operation was tested in the furnace. Based on a standard furnace for wood chips a new type of furnace with fuel staging was developed. The new furnace was integrated and tested in the pilot plant station of combustion at Fraunhofer UMSICHT Sulzbach-Rosenberg. Additionally a model has been developed to draw conclusions from the fuel nitrogen content to the needed amount of secondary fuel.<br/>Proceedings of the 21st European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 3-7 June 2013, Copenhagen, Denmark, pp. 550-554<br/>