Numerical study of air staging in a coke oven heating system

The air staging to combustion approach introduced to a coke oven heating system as a primary method of nitrogen oxide (NO) formation reduction is considered in this paper. To numerically investigate the thermal and prompt NO formation, a heating flue model representing the most popular Polish coke oven battery was used. The model was developed and experimentally validated as a transient coupled model for the representative heating flue and the two coke ovens. Numerical simulations were performed to estimate the amount of NO passing into the atmosphere during the operation of such a heating system with and without the secondary air inlets. Various strategies for the secondary air distribution along the flue gas flow as well as the secondary air velocity were studied. The results of the numerical investigation demonstrated the substantial positive effect of the considered air staging on NO formation reduction.