Design of a secondary combustion chamber for a 350 kW wood-chips fired furnace

The ambition to decrease emissions of green house gases has promoted the use of biomass as an environmentally friendly energy source. Combustion of biomass can produce hazardous emissions unless the combustibles are oxidized to their final products. In order to achieve complete combustion in a 350 kW wood chip fired furnace, a secondary combustion chamber has been developed. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used to aid the design. Both simulations and experimental results show that the secondary chamber works well. Secondary air and combustibles mixes well and the resulting emissions of carbon monoxide and total hydrocarbons (THC) are far below recommended limits.