Title: Numerical simulation of the influence of furnace geometry on its performance in a tangentially fired pulverised-coal supercritical boiler

Authors: G. Sankar; K.R. Balasubramanian; Chandra Sekhar Dhannina; D. Santhosh Kumar

Addresses: Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Tiruchirappalli, 620014, India ' National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, 620015, India ' SOLIDpower (Australia) Pty. Ltd., 9–13 Antonella Court, Dandenong South, VIC 3175, Australia ' Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited, Tiruchirappalli, 620014, India

Abstract: The influence of furnace geometry on furnace performance was numerically investigated for a tangentially fired pulverised coal boiler. Six simulation cases were performed using commercial CFD software ANSYS FLUENT by varying the furnace plan area and geometry. The simulations revealed that, with a 20% increase in plan area, a decrease in FEGT was observed, which corresponded to a drop of approximately 30°C for the rectangular furnace and around 25° C for the square furnace over the actual values. The FEGT of the square furnace was greater by around 10°C compared to the rectangular furnace of same plan area. For a 20% increase in plan area, the total NOx generated fell by around 13% for the rectangular furnace and around 9% for the square furnace. The NOx generated was marginally greater for the rectangular furnace compared to the square furnace. It is prudent to select a rectangular furnace to reduce emissions.

Keywords: heat flux distribution; tangentially fired boiler; NOx emission levels; furnace geometry; supercritical boiler; computational fluid dynamics; CFD.

DOI: 10.1504/PCFD.2022.120280

Progress in Computational Fluid Dynamics, An International Journal, 2022 Vol.22 No.1, pp.51 - 64

Received: 26 Nov 2020
Accepted: 19 Apr 2021

Published online: 13 Jan 2022 *

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