Nitrogen and Sulfur Oxides Emissions from Fuel Oil Combustion in Industrial Steel Reheat Furnace

الملخص

Many industrial heating operations still use fuel
oil for combustion instead of the cleaner gaseous fuels. In
the steel industry, large furnaces referred to as reheat
furnaces are used to heat steel stocks to rolling temperatures
using normally fuel oil for combustion. The combustion
products of flue gases consist of mainly carbon dioxide,
water vapor and traced of other oxides such as nitrogen and
sulfur oxides. These oxides are of a concern to the
environment and should be minimized as much as possible.
Experiments were carried out on a steel billet reheat
furnace in which air/fuel ratios are varied while the nitrogen
oxide content is being monitored using furnace instruments.
These variations in air/fuel ratios for combustion are found
to affect the concentration of nitrogen oxides in the flue gas
where higher air/fuel ratios promoted the formation of
higher nitrogen oxides during combustion. The sulfur
dioxide content in the flue gas was calculated based on
actual measurements of air and fuel rates to the furnace and
found to be minimal in the flue gas.