CFD analysis of a swirl stabilized coal combustion burner

Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gases (GHG) emissions have increased since the pre-industrial era, driven by the economic and population growth. In the last decades, significant efforts have been made to develop cleaner and more efficient technologies able to control GHG emissions. In the field of combustion burners, this commitment strongly relies on the development of new and detailed numerical models, which allow a deep investigation of complex burner performance and a significant reduction of full-scale experimental costs. The knowledge previously acquired on the TEA-C coal burner CFD study is here expanded in the framework of the Be4GreenS project, targeting to the development of a new generation of burners. The new implemented model accounts for the detailed chemical and kinetic characterization of the pulverized coal together with the exact inner volume geometry of the experimental combustion chamber and the actual extension of the heat exchanging and refractory surfaces. In addition, the secondary and tertiary air registers are here numerically investigated. The outcome from the CFD analysis is validated against the experimental data. The NOx formation analysis is also provided.