Clean Energy: "Modeling Optimizes Environmentally Friendly Flameless Furnace"
Giuliano Cammarata and Giuseppe Petrone, University of Catania, Italy
We naturally associate flames with fire, but every school child also learns about slowly occurring flameless oxidation such as when iron rusts or wood rots. Meanwhile researchers have learned that even continuous rapid oxidation need not have a visible flame, and a major benefit of furnaces based on flameless combustion is the extremely low amounts of environmentally damaging nitrogen oxides (NOx) they create. In such furnaces, incoming fuel and air must mix with exhaust gases throughout the chamber. Getting the exhaust gases to recirculate to achieve the proper mix is a key to successful operation, so researchers are using multiphysics simulations to help them design and optimize the furnace components responsible for gas recirculation.