Modeling and Experimental Techniques to Combat Pollutant Emissions from Combustion Systems

A special issue of Fluids (ISSN 2311-5521).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2022) | Viewed by 9960

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Delft Institute of Applied Mathematics, Delft University of Technology, 2628 XE Delft, The Netherlands
Interests: numerical methods for partial differential equations; discretization methods; solution methods for linear systems; nonlinear systems; ordinary differential equations

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Guest Editor
Fluid Mechanics, Department of Engineering Sciences and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology, SE-971 87 Luleå, Sweden
Interests: experimental techniques; computational fluid dynamics; turbulent flow; flow in porous media

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Heavy industry relies on hydrocarbon fuels as a primary source of energy, and suitable alternatives are not available in the short term. The future use of fossil fuels, however, is met by environmental, economical, and geopolitical challenges. The depletion of resources is ongoing, and measures to combat climate change impose ever more stringent requirements on pollutant emissions. Data-driven insights toward formulating guidelines for the sustainable and economical use of hydrocarbon fuels are, thus, urgently required.

The aim of this Special Issue of Fluids is to bring together expertise in modeling and experimental techniques to address and mitigate the pollutant emissions of large industrial furnaces, such as rotary kilns, anode baking furnaces, and hot blast furnaces. Possible outcomes of combining modeling and experimental techniques in innovative ways (data driven models, digital twins) are of special interest. Specific topics of interest for the Special Issue include (but are not limited to):

  • modeling—CFD for turbulent flow (RANS, DES and LES), non-premixed combustion (EDC, flamelet model, thick flame model, tabulation methods), radiative heat transfer (discrete ordinate models, emission submodels), chemical reactor networks, software;
  • experimental techniques for regulating flow, temperature, radiative flux, and species concentration;
  • improved mixing of fuel and combustion air—low NOx burners, swirl, precessing jets, exhaust gas recirculation, flameless combustion;
  • fuel blends—hydrogen injection, synthetic fuels, biofuels;
  • after treatment—catalyst, urea;
  • oxidizer—pure oxygen injections.

We hope that this Special Issue contributes to forging connections between various disciplines and toward realizing more sustainable operation of large industrial furnaces.

Dr. Domenico Lahaye
Dr. Sofia Larsson
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
  • numerical modeling
  • experimental techniques and measurements
  • industrial furnaces
  • emission control
  • combustion
  • single-phase and multiphase flow
  • heat transfer

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 6723 KiB  
Article
Turbulent Non-Stationary Reactive Flow in a Cement Kiln
by Marco Talice, Franjo Juretić and Domenico Lahaye
Fluids 2022, 7(6), 205; https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids7060205 - 15 Jun 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1680
Abstract
The reduction of emissions from large industrial furnaces critically relies on insights gained from numerical models of turbulent non-premixed combustion. In the article Mitigating Thermal NOx by Changing the Secondary Air Injection Channel: A Case Study in the Cement Industry, the authors [...] Read more.
The reduction of emissions from large industrial furnaces critically relies on insights gained from numerical models of turbulent non-premixed combustion. In the article Mitigating Thermal NOx by Changing the Secondary Air Injection Channel: A Case Study in the Cement Industry, the authors present the use of the open-source OpenFoam software environment for the modeling of the combustion of Dutch natural gas in a cement kiln operated by our industrial partner. In this paper, various model enhancements are discussed. The steady-state Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes formulation is replaced by an unsteady variant to capture the time variation of the averaged quantities. The infinitely fast eddy-dissipation combustion model is exchanged with the eddy-dissipation concept for combustion to account for the finite-rate chemistry of the combustion reactions. The injection of the gaseous fuel through the nozzles occurs at such a high velocity that a comprehensive flow formulation is required. Unlike in Mitigating Thermal NOx by Changing the Secondary Air Injection Channel: A Case Study in the Cement Industry, wave transmissive boundary conditions are imposed to avoid spurious reflections from the outlet patch. These model enhancements result in stable convergence of the time-stepping iteration. This in turn increases the resolution of the flow, combustion, and radiative heat transfer in the kiln. This resolution allows for a more accurate assessment of the thermal NO-formation in the kiln. Results of a test case of academic interest are presented. In this test case, the combustion air is injected at a low-mass flow rate. Numerical results show that the flow in the vicinity of the hot end of the kiln is unsteady. A vortex intermittently transports a fraction of methane into the air stream and a spurious reaction front is formed. This front causes a transient peak in the top wall temperature. The simulated combustion process is fuel-rich. All the oxygen is depleted after traveling a few diameters into the kiln. The thermal nitric oxide is formed near the burner and diluted before reaching the outlet. At the outlet, the simulated thermal NO concentration is equal to 1 ppm. The model is shown to be sufficiently mature to capture a more realistic mass inflow rate in the next stage of the work. Full article
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19 pages, 16978 KiB  
Article
The Aerodynamics of an Iron Ore Pelletizing Rotary Kiln
by I. A. Sofia Larsson
Fluids 2022, 7(5), 160; https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids7050160 - 5 May 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 4784
Abstract
This paper summarizes more than a decade of systematic studies of the flow field in an iron ore pelletizing rotary kiln using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on simplified models of a real kiln. Physical, laser-based experiments have been performed to validate part of [...] Read more.
This paper summarizes more than a decade of systematic studies of the flow field in an iron ore pelletizing rotary kiln using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) on simplified models of a real kiln. Physical, laser-based experiments have been performed to validate part of the numerical results. The objective is a better understanding of the kiln aerodynamics and, by extension, its effect on the combustion process. Despite all of the simplifications regarding the models studied in this project, the results show the importance of correctly predicting the flow field in order to optimize the combustion process. Combustion simulations revealed that the heat release from the flame does not affect or change the flow field in any significant way; the flow field, however, governs the flame propagation and affects the combustion process by controlling the mixing rates of fuel and air. Using down-scaled isothermal water models for investigating kiln aerodynamics in general and mixing properties in particular is therefore justified. Although the heat release from the flame cannot be accounted for in isothermal models, valuable implications regarding the real process can still be gained. To better model the actual process numerically, more advanced submodels for both the combustion and especially the flow field are needed. The complex flow field in this type of rotary kiln requires a careful choice of turbulence model to obtain accurate simulation results. Full article
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17 pages, 12023 KiB  
Article
Modeling Conjugate Heat Transfer in an Anode Baking Furnace Using OpenFoam
by Domenico Lahaye, Prajakta Nakate, Kees Vuik, Franjo Juretić and Marco Talice
Fluids 2022, 7(4), 124; https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids7040124 - 23 Mar 2022
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 2730
Abstract
The operation of large industrial furnaces will continue to rely on hydrocarbon fuels in the near foreseeable future. Mathematical modeling and numerical simulation is expected to deliver key insights to implement measures to further reduce pollutant emissions. These measures include the design optimization [...] Read more.
The operation of large industrial furnaces will continue to rely on hydrocarbon fuels in the near foreseeable future. Mathematical modeling and numerical simulation is expected to deliver key insights to implement measures to further reduce pollutant emissions. These measures include the design optimization of the burners, the dilution of oxidizer with exhaust gasses, and the mixing of natural gas with hydrogen. In this paper, we target the numerical simulation of non-premixed turbulent combustion of natural gas in a single heating section of a ring pit anode baking furnace. In previous work, we performed combustion simulations using a commercial flow simulator combined with an open-source package for the three-dimensional mesh generation. This motivates switching to a fully open-source software stack. In this paper, we develop a Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes model for the turbulent flow combined with an infinitely fast mixed-is-burnt model for the non-premixed combustion and a participating media model for the radiative heat transfer in OpenFoam. The heat transfer to the refractory brick lining is taken into account by a conjugate heat transfer model. Numerical simulations provide valuable insight into the heat release and chemical species distribution in the staged combustion process using two burners. Results show that at the operating conditions implemented, higher peak temperatures are formed at the burner closest to the air inlet. This results in a larger thermal nitric-oxide concentration. The inclusion of the heat absorption in the refractory bricks results in a more uniform temperature on the symmetry plane at the center of the section. The peak in thermal nitric-oxides is reduced by a factor of four compared to the model with adiabatic walls. Full article
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