High temperature air combustion is a prospecting technology in energy saving and pollutants reduction. Numerical simulation on pulverized coal combustion and NOx emissions in high temperature air from circulating fluidized bed was presented. The down-fired combustor, taken as the calculation domain, has the diameter of 220 mm and the height of 3000 mm. 2 cases with air staging combustion are simulated. Compared the simulation results with experimental data, there is a good agreement. It is found that the combustion model and NOx formation model are applicable to simulate the pulverized coal combustion and NOx emissions in high temperature air from circulating fluidized bed. The results show that there is a uniform temperature profile along the axis of the down-fired combustor. The NOx emissions are lower than those of ordinary pulverized coal combustion, and the NOx emissions are 390 mg/m3 and 352 mg/m3 in Case 1 and Case 2, respectively. At the range of 300-600 mm below the nozzle, the NO concentration decreases, mainly resulting from some homogeneous reactions and heterogeneous reaction. NO concentration has a little increase at the position of 800 mm below the nozzle as the tertiary air supplied to the combustor at the position of 600 mm below the nozzle.
A 30 kW bench-scale rig of pulverized anthracite combustion preheated by a circulating fluidized bed （CFB） was developed. The CFB riser has a diameter of 90 mm and a height of 1,500 mm. The down-fired combustion chamber （DFCC） has a diameter of 260 mm and a height of 3,000 mm. Combustion experiments were carded out using pulverized anthracite with 6.74% volatile content. This low volatile coal is difficult to ignite and burn out. Therefore, it requires longer burnout time and higher combustion temperature, which results in larger NOx emis- sions. In the current study, important factors that influence the combustion characteristics and NOx emissions were investigated such as excess air ratio, air ratio in the reducing zone, and fuel residence time in the reducing zone. Pulverized anthracite can be quickly preheated up to 800~C in CFB when the primary air is 24% of theo- retical air for combustion, and the temperature profile is uniform in DFCC. The combustion efficiency is 94.2%, which is competitive with other anthracite combustion technologies. When the excess air ratio ranges from 1.26 to 1.67, the coal-N conversion ratio is less than 32% and the NOx emission concentration is less than 371 mg/m^3 （@6% O2）. When the air ratio in the reducing zone is 0.12, the NOx concentration is 221 mg/m^3 （@6% O2）, and the coal-N conversion ratio is 21%, which is much lower than that of other boilers.
