23rd European Symposium on Computer Aided Process Engineering

On-line modeling of NO_x formation in a coal boiler

Achim Wechsung^a and Paul I. Barton^a,    ^aProcess Systems Engineering Laboratory, Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Mass. Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139, USA

Abstract

A dynamic model of a coal fired boiler is proposed to predict the formation of NO_x during plant operation. Since evaluation of the model at hand should only take few minutes, computationally expensive CFD simulations are not feasible. Instead, it is proposed to represent the boiler as a network of ideal reactors. Gas phase reactions are modeled using a detailed kinetic mechanism; additional consideration is necessary for the heterogeneous reactions on char particles. In the reported preliminary ...