A comprehensive study on NOx emission and fuel nitrogen conversion of solid biomass in bubbling fluidized beds under staged combustion

Despite the relatively low emissions in fluidized-bed combustion, NOx emission for biomass combustion is still a major concern because of increasingly stricter regulations. To realize NOx emission behavior in fluidized beds comprehensively, the effects of bed temperature, excess oxygen, staged combustion, and flue gas recirculation (FGR) are investigated in this study. In particular, three different types of operation are applied in staged combustion to find out the key parameter. The results indicate that NOx emissions increase with both bed temperature and excess oxygen, in which the influence of excess oxygen is greater than the other. Lowering bed temperature by water addition seems to be able to simultaneously reduce NOx emission and agglomerate formation, especially for fuels with high nitrogen content, but the pros and cons should be considered. The results in staged combustion infer that the residence time is much more critical than the stoichiometry in the bed. As for FGR, its impact appears to depend on the type of fuel. The correlation between NOx emission behavior and fuel characteristics is also scrutinized; it is concluded that the fuel-N conversion to NOx is essentially related to some features of fuels. (C) 2019 Energy Institute. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.