Volume 20: Sustainable Energy Solutions for a Post-COVID Recovery towards a Better Future: Part III

Understanding the Hydrogen/Ammonia Combustion Behaviours under Air and Oxygen Environments in a Combustion Chamber Xiyao Sun, Chuan Wang, Yukun Hu

Abstract

This paper dedicates to investigate the feasible and sustainable combustion fuel design which can be used to mitigate the environmental challenges posed by using conventional combustion fuel such as natural gas (CH4) and propane (C3H8) in the industrial metal reheating processes. Three possible solutions were evaluated by using CFD method in Ansys Fluent: oxy-H2, air-H2 and airNH3/H2. It has been found that oxy-H2 combustion can simultaneously satisfy the requirement of both flame temperature and NOx reduction. However, the use of oxy-H2 solution might lead to high costs and a large amount of waste heat. The air-H2 solution possesses the advantage of low cost and sufficient heat, but the NOx emission is higher than that of propane combustion due to higher flame temperature. For the air-NH3/H2 solution, feasible combination schemes taking into consideration flame temperature, combustion efficiency and NOx emissions were determined and ready to be analysed in terms of scale formation.

Keywords oxy-H2 and air-H2 combustion, air-NH3/H2 combustion, metal reheating, reheating furnace, sustainable industrial fuel design, CFD simulation