Energy 29 (2004) 167183

www.elsevier.com/locate/energy

Modeling and optimization of the NOx emission

characteristics of a tangentially red boiler with articial
neural networks
Hao Zhou
, Kefa Cen, Jianren Fan
Clean Energy and Environment Engineering Key Lab of MOE, Institute for Thermal Power Engineering,
Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, PR China
Received 7 February 2001

Abstract
The present work introduces an approach to predict the nitrogen oxides (NOx) emission characteristics
of a large capacity pulverized coal red boiler with articial neural networks (ANN). The NOx emission
and carbon burnout characteristics were investigated through parametric eld experiments. The eects of
over-re-air (OFA) ow rates, coal properties, boiler load, air distribution scheme and nozzle tilt were
studied. On the basis of the experimental results, an ANN was used to model the NOx emission characteristics and the carbon burnout characteristics. Compared with the other modeling techniques, such as
computational uid dynamics (CFD) approach, the ANN approach is more convenient and direct, and
can achieve good prediction eects under various operating conditions. A modied genetic algorithm
(GA) using the micro-GA technique was employed to perform a search to determine the optimum solution of the ANN model, determining the optimal setpoints for the current operating conditions, which
can suggest operators correct actions to decrease NOx emission.
# 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Coal remains the major source of energy in China. One of the main objectives in coal combustion research is the development of techniques to help the power plant designers and operators to utilize coal cleanly and eciently. Nitrogen oxide emission and carbon burnout in
pulverized coal combustion are important factors aecting the operation of power plants. The

Corresponding author. Tel.: +86-571-87952598; fax: +86-571-87951616.

E-mail address: zhouhao@zju.edu.cn (H. Zhou).

0360-5442/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.energy.2003.08.004

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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

Nomenclature
C
H
O
N
Q
V
w
x
y

carbon content, %
hydrogen content, %
oxygen content, %
nitrogen content, %
heat value, MJ/kg
volatile content, %
the weight of the link between the neurons
the input of the neural network
the output of the neural network

Subscripts
ar
as received
net
net
p
pressure

NOx emission contributes to the increase or growth of photochemical smog and acid rain, to
the enhancement of greenhouse eects, and to the depletion of stratospheric ozone. In the Peoples Republic of China, the current NOx emission limit for dry bottom boilers with a capacity
of 300 MW and larger is 650 mg/Nm3 (at 6 vol % O2 dry), and it will decrease in the future.
On the other hand, the level of unburned carbon in y ash is an important factor aecting the
eciency of pulverized coal red boilers, especially those equipped with low NOx burners. Due
to the reduced mixing intensity and the formation of fuel rich zones under low NOx combustion
conditions, the residence time of the coal particles in the oxygen rich environment decreases,
resulting in an increase of the amount of unburned carbon in y ash.
Pollution formation and carbon burnout in pulverized coal combustion are dominated by the
fuel properties (reactivity, volatiles, nitrogen content, etc), fuel preparation (coal neness) and
combustion conditions (mixing). The emission of NOx from boilers, in contrast to SOx emission, can be reduced signicantly by modication of the combustion process. The inuence of
coal quality on NOx formation has been investigated in the past [113], but no consistent relation between coal type and NOx emission has been found. The eects of burner scale [1415]
and burner design [16] on NOx emission have also been studied. Comparisons of NOx emission
characteristics from full-scale furnaces, pilot-scale test rigs and the drop tube furnaces also have
been made [1,13].
NOx control techniques based on combustion modication are of considerable interest [16],
because they avoid or postpone large capital expenditures while meeting environmental compliance requirements compared with the relatively expensive ue gas NOx reduction technologies.
Detailed measurements of temperature and major species concentration in the furnace are
needed to characterize the NOx emission and carbon burnout behavior. However, because of
the expensive price of measurements of the combustion characteristics and the limitation by the

H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

169

geometry, time and the number of instruments and skills required, only a few detailed works on
large capacity boilers are reported in the literature [1,13,16,17].
The use of computational uid dynamics (CFD) codes for modeling utility boilers is becoming a useful tool to predict the performance of utility boilers and the NOx emission [1822],
which has the potential to become an important design tool to help the engineers to optimize
the operating conditions, reduce pollution emission, improve the design of new boilers and
evaluate the retrot of the old boilers. However, CFD models tend to be really complicated to
build, require signicant computing facilities and are time consuming. It is dicult for the operators to real-time estimate the combustion performance under a changed operating condition or
to real-time optimize the operating conditions using the CFD simulation.
Afonso et al. [2] used another method to estimate the NOx emission from utility boilers, assuming independent eects of fuel properties, boiler design and boiler operating parameters.
The eect of each parameter is taken into account as a change in NOx from a base condition.
The three independent eects are further divided into inuence of fuel nitrogen content, primary
zone stoichiometry, primary air velocity, coal neness and heat release rate.
In recent years, ANN has been widely accepted as a technology oering an alternative way to
simulate complex and ill-dened problems [2328]. Applications of ANN modeling in coal related issues are practically non-existent with only few exceptions, e.g. use of ANN in coal pyrolysis [24], coal combustion rate prediction [25], prediction of coal ash fusion temperature [26],
electric utility coal quality analysis [27].
Several groups have been monitoring pollution emission with ANN [2830]. A time delay
ANN model was designed for the dynamic prediction of nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide
emission from a fossil fuel power plant [28]. In Ref. [29], a fully connected recurrent network is
used for identication of NOx emission, and a multilayer feed-forward network is used for NOx
emission control. The pollution emission monitoring approach using ANN based software sensors was presented in Ref. [30]. In that work, the plant was run in a load dispatcher mode, the
furnace control variables and NOx emission were recorded every few minutes, the dynamic
NOx emission characteristics were identied based on the data recorded. The parametric eld
experiments to achieve the optimum operating parameters were not carried out and no research
works on coal combustion optimization was reported.
The objective of this work is to introduce the parametric eld experiments to obtain the relationship between the operating parameters and the pulverized coal combustion characteristics
and demonstrate the ability of ANN to model the low NOx pulverized coal combustion characteristics of a 600 MW (electric) tangentially red boiler. A modied GA was employed to perform a search to determine the optimum solution of the ANN model, determining the optimal
setpoints for the current operating conditions to suggest operators correct actions resulting in
NOx reduction. The eects of micro-GA and other GA parameters on the searching process
were presented. The comparison between ANN and CFD approaches for NOx emission identication was also made.

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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

2. Method
2.1. ANN modeling approach
An ANN consists of interconnected layers of non-linear processing elements, which are commonly referred to as neurons, as they resemble biological neurons. The widely used multilayer
feed-forward network is an important class of neural networks, typically, it consists of a set of
sensory units (source nodes) that constitute the input layer, one or more hidden layers and an
output layer. The input layer acts as an input data holder, which distributes inputs into the network. The input data are propagated through the network via interconnections to processing
elements in hidden layers where they are combined and modied by the activation functions until the output signal can be obtained from the output layer. Such an ANN is commonly referred
to as multilayer perceptrons (MLP) [23]. The sketch of a typical three-layer MLP is shown as
Fig. 1. The output y for the neural network used in this study is given as:
y

1
1 eA

(1)

P
where A, the element activation ni1 wi xi , wi is the weight term.
Other types of transfer functions can be used besides the one described in Eq. (1). All of the
works performed for this study used only the above transfer function. The MLP stores the information in the strength of the neuron interconnections through so-called weights. The ability
of complicated function approximating and information processing of the MLP completely
depends on the weight of the link between the neurons.
Because the weights of the link between the neurons cannot be pre-determined for a largescale ANN, the learning ability is necessary to adjust the weights from the training pattern.
Such an interactive process is called a learning phase in which all the examples are presented to
the ANN. The most popular and successful learning algorithm used to train MLP is the highly

Fig. 1. The sketch of a typical three-layer MLPs.

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171

popular algorithm known as the error back-propagation (BP) algorithm. Some modications
such as momentum strategy, and the adaptive learning rate coecient method have been used
to improve the performance of the original version of the BP algorithm [23].
2.2. Optimization approach
The combustion characteristics model is used to evaluate the eects of operating conditions
on the boiler performance. Moreover, the model can be employed to optimize the combustion
modication.
A lot of optimizing algorithms have been developed in the current literature, which can be
classied into three main types: calculus-based, enumerative, and random. The calculus-based
optimizing methods are local in scope and they depend on the existence of derivatives (well-dened slope values). Obviously, such an existence of derivatives of the NOx emission function is
not available because of the complexity of the NOx emission characteristics. Enumerative methods evaluate the objective function values at every point in the search space, which results in
lack of eciency. Random methods have overcome the shortcomings of the calculus-based and
enumerative schemes. They do not need the existence of derivatives, perform a highly exploitative and ecient search through the variables space.
Genetic algorithm (GA), a currently popular random search technique, is an optimization algorithm imitating the Darwinian principle of survival of the ttest. Genetic algorithms have
been widely applied to optimization problems where more classical methods fail [3135]. Three
genetic operations (selection/reproduction, crossover, an mutation) are employed in GA to
solve a wide range of complex optimization processes.
In GA, the parameters to be optimized are discretized into a number of possibilities, transformed into binary strings of nite length. The strings of the parameter set are chained together
and this chain represents an individuals genotype. Selection is a process in which the individuals with a higher tness value of the population are copied to a mating pool. Crossover operation produces ospring by exchanging parts of the original bit strings of two individuals
selected in the selection process. Mutation modies the ospring by means of occasional random alteration of a bit position. This process prevents the population from becoming too uniform and incapable of further development.
The simple GA described in Ref. [33] used binary coding, roulette wheel (stochastic) selection
and jump mutations. The simple GA can be programmed rather elegantly and compactly, but it
has a disadvantage called premature which means the algorithm cannot nd the best solution
when the problem is multimodal. Some modied GA programming techniques have been developed.
Niching has been shown to be an eective way for multimodal problems. The niching may
hinder the climbing of a single major peak, the near-optimal solution may soon be found if the
niching is not employed. Since the optimization problem is always multimodal, the niching technology is very useful for obtaining a good performance of GA.
Krishnakumar [37] found that a Micro-GA has the ability to avoid premature convergence. A
Micro-GA begins with a random, very small population, the population will converge in a few
generations, then, a new random population is created keeping the best individual from the
previously converged generation, the evolution process restarts. The ability of Micro-GA may

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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

result from the rebirth of a micro-population, in other words, good new genetic information can
be inserted into strong members of the population, which helps the Micro-GA to climb the top
of the peak [37].

3. Experiments
3.1. Testing program
The experiments have been carried out in a 600 MW tangentially red dry bottom boiler with
a large furnace of 19:558  16:4325 m2 section and 57.05 m high. The tilting fuel and combustion air nozzles including six primary air burners and seven secondary air burners and two OFA
ports are located in each corner of the furnace. All nozzles can be tilted in the vertical direction
to about 20o from the horizontal axis, both upwards and downwards to adjust the reheated
steam temperature for the varying fouling conditions of the furnace. The burners on A-E levels
are put into operation under the rated load. The medium-speed coal pulverizers are employed to
supply the coalair mixture to the burners on the corresponding levels. The concentric ring
system is employed to combust bituminite. The fuel and primary air streams are directed at the
circumference of an imaginary circle of 1600 mm diameter at the center of the furnace. The
lower secondary air streams are horizontally deviated a certain angle to the furance walls, the
upper secondary air and OFA streams are directed to the opposite direction of the ow swirl in
the furnace. Such a combustion system is called Low NOx Concentric Firing System
(LNCFS), it can lead to low NOx emission in tangentially ring furnace. The dimensions of the
furnace and the arrangement of the burners are illustrated in Fig. 2.
Two types of coals including an Australian coal (AC) and a Russian coal (RC) are employed
to combust in the furnace, the analysises of the coals used are presented in Table 1.

Fig. 2. The dimensions of the furnace and the arrangement of the burners.

H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

173

Table 1
Analysis of coals used (as revived)
Volatile (wt %)

AC
RC

28.11
24.75

Ultimate analysis (wt %)

Heating value (MJ/kg)

64.51
57.89

3.99
3.17

6.53
9.94

1.56
0.96

26.069
23.667

Twelve tests have been performed on this boiler, a brief description of the test program is
given below.
1. The eect of the OFA ow rates on the low NOx combustion characteristics was investigated
in the cases 15. Case 1 was the base case, the Australian coal was burned in these cases.
2. The inuence of the secondary air distribution scheme on the combustion performance was
studied in the Cases 12, 6 and 7. Case 12 was the base case, the Russian coal was burned in
these cases.
3. Cases 89 and Cases 1011 tested the eect of nozzles tilt and the boiler load on the low
NOx combustion performance, respectively.
4. The inuence of the coal properties on the combustion performance was investigated in
Cases 1 and 12, respectively.

3.2. The NOx and carbon burnout characteristics

During all the experiments, the neness of the coal is kept constant. NOx and O2 concentrations were monitored continuously in the boiler outlet prior to the air heater. Solids samples
were withdrawn from the ue gas by a cyclone dust collector. The NOx concentrations reported
here are average values over several hours of stable operation, and they were obtained under
dry gas conditions. Pulverized coal samples were extracted from the burner supply lines with
isokinetic multipoint sampling system. The measurements were performed a week later after the
boiler switched to the pure test coal to make the boiler conditions unchanging. Only pure test
coal was red during the tests. The operational parameters of the tests are listed in Tables 2 and
3, the measured furnace peak temperature, the NOx emission and the unburned carbon in y
ash are summarized in Table 4. Note the damper position indicated in Tables 2 and 3 is the percentage opening of a buttery valve across the area of the given inlet port. The eld tests show
that the air was almost evenly distributed between the same level of the burners in proportion to
the ow areas according to the percentage damper opening.
The NOx emission of Case 1 (burning Australian coal) is 746.3 mg/Nm3, it decreases in Case
2 when the damper opening of the OFA-A is kept constant and the OFA-B damper opening
icreases, but the unburned carbon increases greatly by 51%.
In Cases 3 and 4, the reduction in the damper opening of the OFA-B results in the increase of
NOx emission. But when the OFA-A and OFA-B are both closed in Case 5, the NOx emission

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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

Table 2
The boiler operating condition
Case Total fuel Total The opening value of the coal feeder (%)
rate(t/h) air
rate
(t/h)
A
B
C
D
E

The damper opening of the secondary air

burner (%)

AA

AB

BC

CD

DE

EF

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

65
65
65
65
65
65
65
65
65
45
45
65

65
65
65
65
65
40
65
65
65
45
45
65

65
65
65
65
65
40
65
65
65
45
45
65

65
65
65
65
65
80
65
65
65
45
45
65

65
65
65
65
65
80
65
65
65
25
45
65

65
65
65
65
65
85
85
65
65
45
45
65

238.6
237.1
231.7
232.7
228.7
240.4
242.6
241.0
240.6
180.7
143.0
239.2

2367
2350
2328
2293
2283
2337
2343
2344
2367
1875
1520
2321

67.77
68.93
64.37
64.73
63.13
67.27
70.30
68.00
70.97
65.50
49.77
69.07

68.80
68.83
69.23
69.63
68.17
72.97
73.77
72.77
73.37
66.57
52.73
73.57

70.60
69.93
68.93
69.00
68.23
72.80
73.10
72.77
73.07
66.60
53.30
73.27

66.17
66.07
67.80
68.10
67.23
67.10
67.50
67.20
67.30
60.50
47.27
67.60

67.97
66.17
61.34
61.37
60.70
60.27
61.10
60.37
59.57
0
0
60.43

are reduced. Such a phenomenon may be caused by the low oxygen concentration in the furnace
in this case.
The decrease in amount of the secondary air injected into the main combustion zone in Case
6 leads to a reduction of NOx emission, it decreases by 16.9% more than that of Case 12.
Table 3
The boiler operating condition (continued)
Case

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
a

The air ow rate through the mill (t/h)

Damper opening O2 in
of OFA port (%) ue gas
(%)
OFA-A
60
60
60
31
0
60
60
60
60
60
48
60

OFA-B
40
100
0
0
0
40
40
40
40
0
0
40

3.307
3.325
3.022
3.042
2.762
3.100
3.079
3.091
3.232
3.922
4.732
3.089

A
111.4
111.6
109.0
98.54
109.7
104.3
104.1
102.5
101.9
108.8
112.4
102.8

B
105.8
106.1
107.3
106.4
108.1
118.9
110.4
110.8
112.2
112.4
110.4
110.2

C
106.6
104.0
105.1
99.65
104.6
117.5
114.0
115.9
117.9
103.5
101.4
116.5

D
110.2
109.2
105.4
105.8
107.6
106.7
106.7
107.7
107.6
114.6
118.1
106.7

E
102.2
103.2
103.9
106.1
105.2
106.0
105.5
105.6
104.2
20.45
17.30
105.8

Coal
type

Nozzle
Pressure drop
tilta
between the
windbox and the
furnace (Kpa)

AC
AC
AC
AC
AC
RC
RC
RC
RC
AC
AC
RC

0.899
0.844
0.962
1.016
1.014
0.931
0.888
0.882
0.919
0.836
0.480
0.892

0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.5
0.6
0.4
0.5
0.5
0.5

The nozzles tilt equaling 0.5 stands for horizontal. In case 8, the nozzles are tilted upwards to 60%. In case 9, the
nozzles are tilted downwards to 40%.

H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

175

Table 4
The furnace peak temperature, NOx emission and unburned carbon under various operating conditions
Case

10

11

12

1490 1450 1440 1460 1500 1500 1500 1500 1460 1420 1380 1490
Peak temperature
( C)
746.34 732.94 777.87 906.53 784.64 644.75 620.17 713.91 671.72 638.76 632.94 659.32
NOx (mg/Nm3)a
Unburned carbon (%) 1.09
1.65
1.40
1.43
1.33
1.39
1.29
1.21
1.18
1.13
0.73
1.16
a

The NOx emission concentration is calculated to that at 6vol% O2 dry.

The burner tilt inuences on NOx mainly through a change in the residence times in the fule
rich and the burnout zone. It is reported that an increase in angle between burner tilt (varied
between 0 and 20o) and OFA tilt (between 5 and 30 o) could decrease NOx up to 25% [12].
The OFA ports and the burners are tilted in the same direction in this boiler, all upwards or all
downwards, so the experimental results dier from the data in the above literature. When the
nozzles are tilted upwards, the NOx concentrations in the ue gas increase greatly. The cause
may be that the combustion core moves upwards when the nozzles are tilted upwards, the distance between the OFA nozzle and the combustion core decreases, and the rigidity of the OFA
stream weakens, these factors lead to an increase in NOx emission.
The coal properties aects the combustion performance greatly, the NOx emission when
burning the Australian coal (Case 1) is much higher than the value when buring Russian coal
(Case 12). This may be due to the higher volatility and nitrogen content of the Australian coal.
The NOx emission decrease with the reduction of the boiler load, as illustrated in Fig. 3. The
NOx emission decrease much more rapidly in the range of 600480 MW than that in the range
of 480350 MW. It implies that the thermal NOx occupy a rather large proportion of the total
NOx release under the higher boiler load. The furnace peak temperature measured under the
600 MW boiler load was 1500  C, while that of 480 and 350 MW were 1420  and 1360  C,
respectively.

Fig. 3. The inuence of boiler load on the combustion performance.

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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

4. Results and discussion

4.1. ANN modeling process
ANN training results in the achievement of the values of connection weights between processing elements in the input and hidden layer and between the hidden layer and output layers
which minimize the dierences between the network output and the measured values. Experimental data stated above are used to nd the relation between the coal qualities, operational
parameters and the NOx emission, carbon burnout. The following 29 variables are chosen as
inputs to the network.
1. Twenty-three variables characterizing operational conditions of the boiler, including: (1) total
fuel rate, one variable; (2) total air ow rate, one variable; (3) coal feeder feeding rate, ve
variables; (4) secondary air burner damper position, six variables; (5) OFA port damper position, two variables; (6) pressure drop between the windbox and the furnace, one variable; (7)
oxygen concentration in the ue gas, one variable; (8) primary air ow rate, ve variables; (9)
nozzle tilt, one variable.
2. Six variables characterizing coal properties, including: (1) content of carbon, C (wt% as
received); (2) hydrogen, H (wt% as received); (3) oxygen, O (wt% as received); (4) nitrogen,
N (wt% as received); (5) volatile (wt% as received), (6) heat value (Mj/kg as received).
The experimental results show that the furnace temperature is aected by the boilers load
mainly, then the eect of furnace temperature on the NOx emission is represented by boiler load
taking acount of the total fuel rate and the total air ow rate. When the ANN is employed to
model the carbon burnout characteristics of the boiler, the output variable of the ANN is the
unburned carbon content in the y ash.
An ANN with 29 input neurons in the input layer, one output neuron in the output layer and
31 hidden neurons in the hidden layer to model the NOx emission characteristics of the boiler.
The 29 input variables are illustrated in Tables 13.
Training the ANN is an important step for developing a useful network. The experimental
data of Cases 111 are used as the learning samples to train the ANN. The learning parameter
is 0.9, the moment attachment and the self-adaptive learning step size method are adopted in
the training process. The momentum factor is taken as 0.8. The training will stop when the
mean square error of the system is less than 0.00001, a total of 11918 epoches are needed to
achieve the correct weight and threshold values.
The data of Case 12 are employed as input to verify the accuracy of the model, the NOx concentration output of the ANN is 681.19 mg/Nm3, while the experimental result is 659.32 mg/
Nm3. Thus the absolute error is 21.87 mg/Nm3 and the relative error is 3.3%. Such an examination was also done on the training samples, the measured data in the experiments and the estimated data of the model are illustrated in Fig. 4. It can be found that the accuracy of model for
the learned samples is good and the error increases little for the unlearned sample of Case 12.
The carbon burnout characteristics have been modeled using the ANN. The unburned carbon
content output of the ANN is 1.216% for Case 12, while the experimental value is 1.16%. The
measured unburned carbon in y ash and the predicted data are illustrated in Fig. 5.

H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

177

Fig. 4. The NOx emission prediction eect of the neural networks.

Fig. 5. The carbon burnout prediction eect of the neural networks.

4.2. The comparison of ANN and CFD approaches

A three-dimensional numerical simulation was also developed to predict the NOx emission
characteristics of this boiler, as described in detail in Ref. [18]. The mathematical model is based
on a Eulerian description for the continuum phase and a stochastic Lagrangian description for
the coal particles. During traveling through gas, the coal particles devolatilize and undergo char
combustion. A post processor is employed to simulate the NOx emission, including thermal
NOx and fuel NOx. Thermal NOx was assumed to form by a Zeldovich mechanism. A NOx
formation and decomposition mechanism presented by De Soete [36] was employed to model

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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

the rate of the fuel NOx. The numerical predicted NOx emission characteristics for Cases 1, 5
and 10 at the furnace exit are 662.6, 735 and 573 mg/Nm3. Such results were encouraging compared to the measured NOx emission of 746.3, 784.6 and 638.8 mg/Nm3 for Cases 1, 5 and 10,
respectively. Because the mechanisms of NOx formation and decomposition in turbulent ame
are so complicated, a lot of work should be carried out to enhance the accuracy of numerical
simulations. The investigations conducted by other researchers show the similar results [19,21].
The ANN approach takes only several minutes of CPU time on a modern desktop computer
while the CFD approach takes several days to complete the numerical simulation. The CFD
simulation convergence rate is too slow to on-line evaluate the appropriate operating parameters for a changed operating condition.
4.3. The combustion optimization based on ANN model
Another benet resulting from the ANN model is that it can be combined with the optimizing
algorithms. Using the ANN to model the NOx emission characteristics of the boiler, the function between the input operating parameters and the NOx emission can be obtained. Because
the ANN may be considered simply as a nonlinear inputoutput mapping, such a mapping is so
quick and the output of the ANN is suitable to be used as the objective function for the optimizing algorithms.
In this work, a modied GA is employed to search the optimum solution of the ANN model
of NOx emission. The modied GA uses niching and micro-GA technologies to obtained good
solutions.
Under a determined unit load, the most concerned parameters are the ue gas oxygen and
OFA and secondary air burner damper opening position. The boiler load and coal properties
may be determined by the unit operating condition and not be considered as adjustable parameters. The other parameters such as mill feeder opening value, air ow rate and nozzle tilt may be
determined by the mill and forced draft operating conditions and the furnace fouling condition,
they are usually not be adjusted to decrease the NOx emission.
As an example, the OFA and secondary air burner damper opening are taken as the adjustable parameters to be optimized by GA. The other parameters can also be optimized with the
same method if needed. The carbon burnout model can also be employed as the objective function to achieve the optimal operating condition resulting in lowest unburned carbon. Because
the unburned carbon in y ash is very low for this boiler, we paid major attention to the NOx
emission reduction strategy.
The adjustable range for the auxiliary air damper opening is 5090% and that of OFA port is
4090%, it is determined by the operating habit and security consideration. The experimental
data of Cases 19 and Case 12 are taken as input data to train the ANN because only the combustion optimization process under rated boiler load is conducted. It also results from the lack
of experimental data under the medium and low boiler load. The ANN models accuracy can be
raised by this means when the experimental data is insucient.
The other 21 input operating parameters are the same with those of Case 1, which means GA
searches the optimum air distribution scheme under the operating conditions of Case 1. The
searching process is illustrated in Fig. 6. The eect of population size and niching technique on
the genetic algorithms performance is presented in Fig. 7. In general, larger populations can nd

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179

Fig. 6. The searching process of GA employing micro-GA technique.

the optimal individual in fewer generations than smaller populations. But the larger populations
cost a longer amount of CPU time to compute their progress. In this application, a population
size equal to 25 can nd the optimal individual if the micro-GA technique is adopted. The niching technique does not show its advantage for this application as illustrated in Fig. 7.
The predicted NOx emission can be decreased to about 579 mg/Nm3 when the operating
parameters are optimized following the optimization results of GA. The optimized air distribution scheme is illustrated in Table 5. The measured NOx emission concentration under such

Fig. 7. The eect of population size on the GA searching performance.

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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167183

Table 5
The optimized damper openings (%)
Burner

AA

AB

BC

CD

DE

EF

OFA-A OFA-B

Optimized damper opening (%)

50.0

50.0

50.0

50.0

50.0

90.0

90.0

90.0

an optimal operation condition was 620 mg/Nm3. The NOx emission decreases from 746 to 620
mg/Nm3 through combustion optimization.
If the oxygen concentration in ue gas is also taken into account to optimize the combustion,
the genetic algorithms can also achieve the optimal operating parameters resulting in the lowest
NOx emission. The oxygen concentration adjustable range is 3.05.0 vol%. The searching process is illustrated in Fig. 8. After GA nishes its searching process, the optimal oxygen concentration in ue gas is 3.0 vol%, the secondary air and OFA burner damper opening is the same
with those in Table 5. Under such an optimized operating condition, the predicted NOx emission achieves 527.6 mg/Nm3.
The GA search process results show that using the output of the ANN model as the objective
function leads to progressive and rapid convergence. The eciency of the GA is closely linked
to its objective function, the ANN model can meet the requirement because an ANN employs
simple equations to map the inputoutput pattern and such a calculation consumes less time.
Although the CFD approach can also give an output from the input operating parameters, it is
time-consuming and not suitable as an in-line guide for operation optimization.

Fig. 8. The searing process of GA with nine adjustable operating parameters.

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5. Conclusions
At present, the full-scale boiler experiments are always used to evaluate the NOx emission of
coal-red boilers, and this procedure is often complex and laborious. If the coal burned and the
operation parameters changed in regular operations, the optimal low NOx combustion condition will not be achieved from the experimental experience, which leads to new experiments.
By comparison with the CFD approach, the modeling process using the ANN is much easier
and direct. Using the ANN technology, a model predicting the NOx emission of a tangentially
red boiler is developed. It is veried with the experimental results, which show that the ANN
approach is accurate, and it can always give a general and suitable way to predict the NOx
emission characteristic of the tangentially red boiler under various operating conditions and
burning dierent coal.
A modied GA was employed to perform a search to determine the optimum solution of the
ANN model, determining the optimal setpoints for the current operating conditions to suggest
operators correct actions resulting in NOx reduction.
Because the accuracy and robustness of an ANN model is strongly inuenced by the availability of training data, it is important that the training data display as much variation as possible and completely describe the operating conditions and coal rank of industrial applications.
ANN provide an approximation to a non-linearity phenomenon and can only be trusted within
the scope of the training data. In this work, The GA application can only be accepted as an
example of this procedure for future practical applications because the used ANN is not robust
and accurate enough, for the ANN model was built on a limited number of experimental
results.
But with the wide use of the distributed control system (DCS) in power units, it is very convenient to achieve the operational parameters from the DCS. The on-line plant data can be
downloaded from the DCS and saved in a database. Also, with the wide use of the continuous
emission monitoring system (CEMS) and the unburned carbon in y ash monitor in the power
station, a lot of input and output data can be achieved to train the ANN. The ANN can be easily reestablished to model the current combustion process in the furnace with the newest plant
data. Combined with the genetic algorithm, the optimal operating parameters can be found to
keep the unit in low NOx emission conditions. It is convenient to employ the ANN model and
optimization method developed in this work to model the combustion characteristics using the
large amount of training data downloaded from the DCS and CEMS.
Acknowledgements
Supported by China National Key Basic Special Funds Project (NKBRSF) (2001CB409600,
G1999022204) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (50206018).
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