Combustion, cofiring and emissions characteristics of torrefied biomass in a drop tube reactor

Sulphur and nitrogen contents of woody biomass fuels are low. Blending woody biomass with coal lowers the emissions of SO2 mainly as a result of dilution. NOX emissions have a more complex dependency on the nitrogen content. Factors such as volatile content of the fuels, fuel type, furnace and burner configurations also impact the final NOX emissions. In comparison to unstaged combustion, the nitrogen conversion to NOX declined from 34% to 9% for air-staged co-combustion of torrefied biomass and hard coal. For the air-staged mono-combustion cases, nitrogen conversion to NOX declined from between 42% and 48% to about 10%-14%.