MILD oxy-combustion of gaseous fuels in a laboratory-scale furnace

CATEGORY: COMBUSTION
Combustion and Flame, Volume 160, Issue 5, May 2013, Pages 933–946
MILD oxy-combustion of gaseous fuels in a laboratory-scale furnace
Pengfei Li (a), Bassam B. Dally (b), Jianchun Mi (a), Feifei Wang (a)
a State Key Laboratory of Turbulence and Complex Systems, Department of Energy & Resources Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, China
b Center of Energy Technology & School of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Adelaide, Australia
Abstract
Reports a study of the characteristics of Moderate or Intense Low-oxygen Dilution (MILD) oxy-combustion in a laboratory-scale furnace. Researchers conducted experiments using natural gas (NG), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and ethylene (C₂H₄) at a firing rate of 13 kW. They recorded the furnace temperatures and exhaust emissions for a range of equivalence ratios and external-CO₂ dilution rates.
They noted that MILD combustions occur for the three fuels even when using pure oxygen as oxidant. When diluting oxidant by CO₂ at a fixed rate, the MILD combustion can be established as long as the equivalence ratio (Φ) is sufficiently high. They observed the region of MILD combustion to be wider with dilution by CO₂ than by N₂. In addition, the operating range of MILD combustion is larger for NG than LPG or C₂H₄ as fuel.
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