Concept of Eco Scrubbing Technology: A CFD case study in small furnace

Abstract

The substantial rise in CO2 percentage in the atmosphere owing to the increasing demand in electrical power is alarming and needs to be addressed. Coal continues to be a key fuel in global energy systems, accounting for nearly 40% of electricity generation. To resolve this situation, worldwide researchers are constantly investigating effective alternatives in a hope to establish a cost-effective eco-friendly power generation system. As such, eco-scrubbing technology is a trending retrofit option in existing plants. In the work presented in this paper, we performed a CFD modelled simulation on a unit of 30kW thermal load capacity. The objective of this study is to observe different combustion characteristics on four different cases: one air-firing reference case and three other oxy-fuel (25%, 30% and 35% O2) cases. We investigated about the different significant combustion characteristics such as temperature distribution over the furnace, O2 and CO2 mass fraction throughout the furnace and velocity distributions through the furnace and presented comparable results later on. The results indicated that an increase of oxygen concentration in the oxy-firing cases caused slight rise in the flame temperature with occurrence of burnout in advance under oxy-fuel conditions in comparison to air-fired conditions.