Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

This paper reports on a combined experimental and modeling investigation of NOx formation in nitrogen-diluted laminar methane diffusion flames seeded with ammonia. The methane-ammonia mixture is a surrogate for biomass fuels which contain significant fuel-bound nitrogen. The experiments use flue-gas sampling to measure the concentration of stable species in the exhaust gas, including NO, O2, CO, and CO2. The computations evolve a two-dimensional low Mach number model using a solution-adaptive projection algorithm to capture fine-scale features of the flame. The model includes detailed thermodynamics and chemical kinetics, differential diffusion, buoyancy, and radiative losses. The model shows good agreement with the measurements over the full range of experimental NH3 seeding amounts. As more NH3 is added, a greater percentage is converted to N2 rather than to NO. The simulation results are further analyzed to trace the changes in NO formation mechanisms with increasing amounts of ammonia in the fuel.