CFD modelling of air-fired and oxy-fuel combustion in a large-scale furnace at Loy Yang A brown coal power station

Oxy-fuel combustion technique is a viable option to reduce several types of greenhouse gases (GHGs) emissions from the pulverized coal (PC) combustion systems. In this paper, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modelling study has been developed in order to investigate the Victorian brown coal combustion in a 550 MW utility boiler under the air-fired (reference case) and three oxy-fuel-fired scenarios. The reference firing case was modelled based on the operating conditions of Loy Yang A power plant located in the state of Victoria, Australia. While Chalmers’ oxy-fuel combustion approach was selected for the present oxy-fuel combustion simulations, which referred to as OF25 (25 vol.% O2), OF27 (27 vol.% O2), and OF29 (29 vol.% O2). User-defined functions (UDFs) were written and incorporated into the CFD code to calculate the following mathematical models: the PC devolatilization, char burnout, multi-step chemical reactions, mass and heat transfer, carbon in fly-ash, and NOx formation/destruction. A level of confidence of the CFD model was achieved validating four different parameters of the conventional combustion case, as well as the previous preliminary CFD studies that conducted on a 100 kW unit firing propane and lignite under oxy-fuel combustion environments. The numerical results of OF29 combustion condition were considerably similar to the reference firing results in terms of gas temperature levels and radiative heat transfer relative to the OF25 and OF27 combustion cases. This similarity was due to increasing the residence time of PC in the combustion zone and O2-enriched in feed oxidizer gases. A significant increase in the CO2 concentrations and a noticeable decrease in the NOx formation were observed under all oxy-fuel combustion scenarios. The combustion chemistry was adopted in these investigations in order to capture the effects of O2 concentrations and gas temperatures on the CO/CO2 production rate and equilibrium between H2 and H2O in the combustion zone. Also, the use of O2-enriched atmospheres during oxy-fuel-fired cases was slightly enhanced the carbon burnout rate. These predicted results were reasonably consistent with the experimental investigations and numerical modelling found in the literature. This study of Victorian brown coal oxy-fuel combustion in a large-scale tangentially-fired boiler is important prior to its implementation in real-life.