The Effects of Ammonia on SO2 Emissions in a Fluidized Bed Combustor Under Pseudo-Staged Combustion

The reduction of SO2 by ammonia gas additionduring staged combustion of bituminous coal has beenstudied in a 2 m high fluidized bed combustor of 30 cmstatic bed height and a freeboard height of 100 cm.The coal was introduced to the combustor at 42 cmabove the distributor and the ammonia gas was injectedat 52 cm above the distributor by an uncooledstainless steel injector. Experiments were carriedout to investigate effects of ammonia gas injection onSO2 emissions of (i) air staged levels, (ii) excess air levels, (iii) primary air factor, PAF(ratio of primary to stoichiometric air), (iv) NH3:SO2 molar ratio, and (v) fluidizingvelocity. Experiments were carried out under a newtechnique of air staging called Pseudo-stagedCombustion, maintaining the excess air level andfluidizing velocity between 17 and 70% and between0.7 and 2.0 m sec-1, respectively. A maximum reduction of92% was obtained at 37% excess air, at NH3:SO2 molar ratio of 5.5. The effective NH3:SO2 molar ratio was found to be between 3.0 and5.5, which is true for all staging and excess air levels.A greater removal of SO2 with NH3 injectionduring staged combustion is probably due to this newstaging technique. The Pseudo-staging reducestemperature through the freeboard and flue for theoccurance of as NH3 + SO2 reactions. Thesereactions are reported to be low temperaturereactions. The NH3 carry over was less than 83 ppm for all operating conditions. The present studydemonstrates that staged combustion coupled withammonia injection can reduce SO2 emissions.