A study of combustion process in Khartoum North Steam Power Plant

Abstract

A study of combustion process in Khartoum North Steam Power Plant.

Improving the efficiency of burners and furnaces is one of the key issues for reducing fuel consumption and thus also pollutant gas emissions. Even small improvements in burner energy efficiency and performance can have significant impacts in a continuous operation. For optimizing burner efficiency of Khartoum North Power Station (KNPS) investigation of atomization mixing process was carried out by using Fluent CFD code. The results in steam and heavy fuel oil pressures were found to be 13.2 bars for heavy fuel oil and 8.4 bar for steam, in stead of 10 bar for heavy fuel oil and 8.5 bar for steam. The problems of emission reduction in gaseous of pollutants, particularly of CO, NOx and SO2 are definite necessity because of permanent intensification of combustion process and rigorous environmental protection principles. This forces to develop new methods of combustion technologies and burners construction in order to reduce the pollutant emissions. The results indicate that significant NOx reduction can be obtained through spray steam at post combustion with flue gas recirculation to produce low flame temperature and dissolving NO and SO2. The resulting steam injection is reduces both thermal and fuel NOx production. These results indicate the effectiveness of NOx reduction techniques is directly linked to the amount of injected steam rate and the quality of the fuel. Reductions in NOX of up to 85% can be obtained simply through controlled use of steam injection. The variations in fuel characteristics such as viscosity, distillation curve, carbon residue, and ash composition limits the potential emissions reduction and maintain stable combustion.