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Energy 29 (2004) 167–183

www.elsevier.com/locate/energy

Modeling and optimization of the NOx emission

characteristics of a tangentially fired boiler with artificial
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 fired boiler with artificial neural networks (ANN). The NOx emission
and carbon burnout characteristics were investigated through parametric field experiments. The effects of
over-fire-air (OFA) flow 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 charac-
teristics and the carbon burnout characteristics. Compared with the other modeling techniques, such as
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach, the ANN approach is more convenient and direct, and
can achieve good prediction effects under various operating conditions. A modified genetic algorithm
(GA) using the micro-GA technique was employed to perform a search to determine the optimum sol-
ution 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 com-
bustion research is the development of techniques to help the power plant designers and oper-
ators to utilize coal cleanly and efficiently. Nitrogen oxide emission and carbon burnout in
pulverized coal combustion are important factors affecting 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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168 H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183

Nomenclature

C carbon content, %
H hydrogen content, %
O oxygen content, %
N nitrogen content, %
Q heat value, MJ/kg
V volatile content, %
w the weight of the link between the neurons
x the input of the neural network
y 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 effects, and to the depletion of stratospheric ozone. In the Peo-
ple’s 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 fly ash is an important factor affecting the
efficiency of pulverized coal fired 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 fly ash.
Pollution formation and carbon burnout in pulverized coal combustion are dominated by the
fuel properties (reactivity, volatiles, nitrogen content, etc), fuel preparation (coal fineness) and
combustion conditions (mixing). The emission of NOx from boilers, in contrast to SOx emis-
sion, can be reduced significantly by modification of the combustion process. The influence of
coal quality on NOx formation has been investigated in the past [1–13], but no consistent re-
lation between coal type and NOx emission has been found. The effects of burner scale [14–15]
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 modification are of considerable interest [16],
because they avoid or postpone large capital expenditures while meeting environmental com-
pliance requirements compared with the relatively expensive flue gas NOx reduction tech-
nologies.
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
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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183 169

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 fluid dynamics (CFD) codes for modeling utility boilers is becom-
ing a useful tool to predict the performance of utility boilers and the NOx emission [18–22],
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 retrofit of the old boilers. However, CFD models tend to be really complicated to
build, require significant computing facilities and are time consuming. It is difficult for the oper-
ators 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, as-
suming independent effects of fuel properties, boiler design and boiler operating parameters.
The effect of each parameter is taken into account as a change in NOx from a base condition.
The three independent effects are further divided into influence of fuel nitrogen content, primary
zone stoichiometry, primary air velocity, coal fineness and heat release rate.
In recent years, ANN has been widely accepted as a technology offering an alternative way to
simulate complex and ill-defined problems [23–28]. Applications of ANN modeling in coal re-
lated issues are practically non-existent with only few exceptions, e.g. use of ANN in coal pyrol-
ysis [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 [28–30]. 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 identification of NOx emission, and a multilayer feed-forward network is used for NOx
emission control. The pollution emission monitoring approach using ANN based software sen-
sors 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 identified based on the data recorded. The parametric field
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 field experiments to obtain the re-
lationship between the operating parameters and the pulverized coal combustion characteristics
and demonstrate the ability of ANN to model the low NOx pulverized coal combustion charac-
teristics of a 600 MW (electric) tangentially fired boiler. A modified GA was employed to per-
form 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 effects of micro-GA and other GA parameters on the searching process
were presented. The comparison between ANN and CFD approaches for NOx emission identifi-
cation was also made.
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170 H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183

2. Method

2.1. ANN modeling approach

An ANN consists of interconnected layers of non-linear processing elements, which are com-
monly 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 net-
work. The input data are propagated through the network via interconnections to processing
elements in hidden layers where they are combined and modified by the activation functions un-
til 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:
1
y¼ (1)
1 þ eA
P
where A, the element activation ¼ ni¼1 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 in-
formation 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 large-
scale 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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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183 171

popular algorithm known as the error back-propagation (BP) algorithm. Some modifications
such as momentum strategy, and the adaptive learning rate coefficient 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 effects of operating conditions
on the boiler performance. Moreover, the model can be employed to optimize the combustion
modification.
A lot of optimizing algorithms have been developed in the current literature, which can be
classified 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-de-
fined 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 meth-
ods evaluate the objective function values at every point in the search space, which results in
lack of efficiency. Random methods have overcome the shortcomings of the calculus-based and
enumerative schemes. They do not need the existence of derivatives, perform a highly exploita-
tive and efficient search through the variables space.
Genetic algorithm (GA), a currently popular random search technique, is an optimization al-
gorithm imitating the Darwinian principle of ‘survival of the fittest’. Genetic algorithms have
been widely applied to optimization problems where more classical methods fail [31–35]. 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, trans-
formed into binary strings of finite length. The strings of the parameter set are chained together
and this chain represents an individual’s genotype. Selection is a process in which the individu-
als with a higher fitness value of the population are copied to a mating pool. Crossover oper-
ation produces offspring by exchanging parts of the original bit strings of two individuals
selected in the selection process. Mutation modifies the offspring by means of occasional ran-
dom alteration of a bit position. This process prevents the population from becoming too uni-
form 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 find the best solution
when the problem is multimodal. Some modified GA programming techniques have been de-
veloped.
Niching has been shown to be an effective 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 tech-
nology 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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172 H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183

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 fired dry bottom boiler with
a large furnace of 19:558  16:4325 m2 section and 57.05 m high. The tilting fuel and combus-
tion 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 coal–air mixture to the burners on the corresponding levels. The concentric firing
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 flow 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 firing 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.
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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183 173

Table 1
Analysis of coals used (as revived)
Volatile (wt %) Ultimate analysis (wt %) Heating value (MJ/kg)
C H O N
AC 28.11 64.51 3.99 6.53 1.56 26.069
RC 24.75 57.89 3.17 9.94 0.96 23.667

Twelve tests have been performed on this boiler, a brief description of the test program is
given below.

1. The effect of the OFA flow rates on the low NOx combustion characteristics was investigated
in the cases 1–5. Case 1 was the base case, the Australian coal was burned in these cases.
2. The influence 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 8–9 and Cases 10–11 tested the effect of nozzles tilt and the boiler load on the low
NOx combustion performance, respectively.
4. The influence 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 fineness of the coal is kept constant. NOx and O2 concen-
trations were monitored continuously in the boiler outlet prior to the air heater. Solids samples
were withdrawn from the flue 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 fired 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 fly
ash are summarized in Table 4. Note the damper position indicated in Tables 2 and 3 is the per-
centage opening of a butterfly valve across the area of the given inlet port. The field tests show
that the air was almost evenly distributed between the same level of the burners in proportion to
the flow 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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174 H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183

Table 2
The boiler operating condition
Case Total fuel Total The opening value of the coal feeder (%) The damper opening of the secondary air
rate(t/h) air burner (%)
rate
(t/h)
A B C D E AA AB BC CD DE EF
1 238.6 2367 67.77 68.80 70.60 66.17 67.97 65 65 65 65 65 65
2 237.1 2350 68.93 68.83 69.93 66.07 66.17 65 65 65 65 65 65
3 231.7 2328 64.37 69.23 68.93 67.80 61.34 65 65 65 65 65 65
4 232.7 2293 64.73 69.63 69.00 68.10 61.37 65 65 65 65 65 65
5 228.7 2283 63.13 68.17 68.23 67.23 60.70 65 65 65 65 65 65
6 240.4 2337 67.27 72.97 72.80 67.10 60.27 65 40 40 80 80 85
7 242.6 2343 70.30 73.77 73.10 67.50 61.10 65 65 65 65 65 85
8 241.0 2344 68.00 72.77 72.77 67.20 60.37 65 65 65 65 65 65
9 240.6 2367 70.97 73.37 73.07 67.30 59.57 65 65 65 65 65 65
10 180.7 1875 65.50 66.57 66.60 60.50 0 45 45 45 45 25 45
11 143.0 1520 49.77 52.73 53.30 47.27 0 45 45 45 45 45 45
12 239.2 2321 69.07 73.57 73.27 67.60 60.43 65 65 65 65 65 65

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 Damper opening O2 in The air flow rate through the mill (t/h) Coal Pressure drop Nozzle
of OFA port (%) flue gas type between the tilta
(%) windbox and the
furnace (Kpa)
OFA-A OFA-B A B C D E
1 60 40 3.307 111.4 105.8 106.6 110.2 102.2 AC 0.899 0.5
2 60 100 3.325 111.6 106.1 104.0 109.2 103.2 AC 0.844 0.5
3 60 0 3.022 109.0 107.3 105.1 105.4 103.9 AC 0.962 0.5
4 31 0 3.042 98.54 106.4 99.65 105.8 106.1 AC 1.016 0.5
5 0 0 2.762 109.7 108.1 104.6 107.6 105.2 AC 1.014 0.5
6 60 40 3.100 104.3 118.9 117.5 106.7 106.0 RC 0.931 0.5
7 60 40 3.079 104.1 110.4 114.0 106.7 105.5 RC 0.888 0.5
8 60 40 3.091 102.5 110.8 115.9 107.7 105.6 RC 0.882 0.6
9 60 40 3.232 101.9 112.2 117.9 107.6 104.2 RC 0.919 0.4
10 60 0 3.922 108.8 112.4 103.5 114.6 20.45 AC 0.836 0.5
11 48 0 4.732 112.4 110.4 101.4 118.1 17.30 AC 0.480 0.5
12 60 40 3.089 102.8 110.2 116.5 106.7 105.8 RC 0.892 0.5
a
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%.
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Table 4
The furnace peak temperature, NOx emission and unburned carbon under various operating conditions
Case 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Peak temperature 1490 1450 1440 1460 1500 1500 1500 1500 1460 1420 1380 1490
( C)
NOx (mg/Nm3)a 746.34 732.94 777.87 906.53 784.64 644.75 620.17 713.91 671.72 638.76 632.94 659.32
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 influences 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 differ from the data in the above literature. When the
nozzles are tilted upwards, the NOx concentrations in the flue gas increase greatly. The cause
may be that the combustion core moves upwards when the nozzles are tilted upwards, the dis-
tance 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 affects 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 600–480 MW than that in the range
of 480–350 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 influence of boiler load on the combustion performance.

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176 H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183

4. Results and discussion

4.1. ANN modeling process

ANN training results in the achievement of the values of connection weights between process-
ing elements in the input and hidden layer and between the hidden layer and output layers
which minimize the differences between the network output and the measured values. Experi-
mental data stated above are used to find 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 flow rate, one variable; (3) coal feeder feeding rate, five
variables; (4) secondary air burner damper position, six variables; (5) OFA port damper pos-
ition, two variables; (6) pressure drop between the windbox and the furnace, one variable; (7)
oxygen concentration in the flue gas, one variable; (8) primary air flow rate, five 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 affected by the boiler’s load
mainly, then the effect of furnace temperature on the NOx emission is represented by boiler load
taking acount of the total fuel rate and the total air flow 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 fly 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 1–3.
Training the ANN is an important step for developing a useful network. The experimental
data of Cases 1–11 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 con-
centration 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 examin-
ation was also done on the training samples, the measured data in the experiments and the esti-
mated 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 fly ash and the predicted data are illustrated in Fig. 5.
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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183 177

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

Fig. 5. The carbon burnout prediction effect 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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178 H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183

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 com-
pared 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 flame
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 parame-
ters for a changed operating condition.

4.3. The combustion optimization based on ANN model

Another benefit 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 func-
tion between the input operating parameters and the NOx emission can be obtained. Because
the ANN may be considered simply as a nonlinear input–output mapping, such a mapping is so
quick and the output of the ANN is suitable to be used as the objective function for the opti-
mizing algorithms.
In this work, a modified GA is employed to search the optimum solution of the ANN model
of NOx emission. The modified GA uses niching and micro-GA technologies to obtained good
solutions.
Under a determined unit load, the most concerned parameters are the flue 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 parame-
ters. The other parameters such as mill feeder opening value, air flow 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 adjust-
able 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 func-
tion to achieve the optimal operating condition resulting in lowest unburned carbon. Because
the unburned carbon in fly 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 50–90% and that of OFA port is
40–90%, it is determined by the operating habit and security consideration. The experimental
data of Cases 1–9 and Case 12 are taken as input data to train the ANN because only the com-
bustion 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 model’s accuracy can be
raised by this means when the experimental data is insufficient.
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 effect of population size and niching technique on
the genetic algorithms performance is presented in Fig. 7. In general, larger populations can find
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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183 179

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 find the optimal individual if the micro-GA technique is adopted. The nich-
ing 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 distri-
bution scheme is illustrated in Table 5. The measured NOx emission concentration under such

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

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180 H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183

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 flue 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 3.0–5.0 vol%. The searching pro-
cess is illustrated in Fig. 8. After GA finishes its searching process, the optimal oxygen concen-
tration in flue 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 emis-
sion 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 efficiency 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 input–output 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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H. Zhou et al. / Energy 29 (2004) 167–183 181

5. Conclusions

At present, the full-scale boiler experiments are always used to evaluate the NOx emission of
coal-fired 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 con-
dition 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
fired boiler is developed. It is verified 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 fired boiler under various operating conditions and
burning different coal.
A modified 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 influenced by the avail-
ability of training data, it is important that the training data display as much variation as poss-
ible 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 con-
venient 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 fly ash monitor in the power
station, a lot of input and output data can be achieved to train the ANN. The ANN can be eas-
ily 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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