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Fuel nitrogen conversion and release of nitrogen oxides during coal gangue calcination

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Abstract

The pollution emission during the widespread utilization of coal gangue in construction industry has long been neglected. In present study, the NO x release behaviors in a simulation experiment of coal gangue calcination in construction industry were systematically investigated. The corresponding evolution of nitrogen functionalities in coal gangue was also discussed. Results showed that pyrrolic (N-5) and pyridine N-oxide (N-6-O) forms nitrogen were relatively abundant in the raw gangue. During calcination, the N-5 and N-6-O form nitrogen greatly decreased and converted to quaternary nitrogen (N-Q). It was found that NO2 was formed under slowly heating-up condition and at 600 °C under isothermal condition, while only NO was detected with further increase of temperature. From 600 to 1000 °C, the conversion ratio of fuel nitrogen to NO x increased from 8 to 12 %. The char nitrogen was found greatly contribute to NO formation, which may bring difficulty to the abatement of NO x emission during coal gangue calcination.

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Acknowledgments

This study was sponsored by the Common Development Fund of Beijing and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51172003 and 51074009); the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (863 Program, 2012AA06A114); the China National Key Technology R&D Program (2011BAB03B02 and 2013BAC14B07).

Conflict of interest

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Beijing Key Laboratory for Solid Waste Utilization and Management and Department of Energy and Resource Engineering, College of Engineering, Peking University, Beijing, 100871, People’s Republic of China

    Yingyi Zhang, Lili Liu, Xidong Wang & Zuotai Zhang

  2. Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Environment Monitoring and Pollution Control, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, People’s Republic of China

    Xinlei Ge

Authors
  1. Yingyi Zhang
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  2. Xinlei Ge
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  3. Lili Liu
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  4. Xidong Wang
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  5. Zuotai Zhang
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zuotai Zhang.

Additional information

Responsible editor: Angeles Blanco

Electronic supplementary material

The N functionalities in residual ash of coal gangue after calcination at different temperatures: a) CG1 600 °C; b) CG1 700 °C; c) CG1 900 °C; d) CG2 600 °C; e) CG2 700 °C; f) CG2 900 °C. N-6: pyridinic nitrogen; N-5: pyrrolic nitrogen; N-Q: quaternary nitrogen; N-6-O: pyridine N-oxide (Fig. SI1 in Online Resource 1).

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Zhang, Y., Ge, X., Liu, L. et al. Fuel nitrogen conversion and release of nitrogen oxides during coal gangue calcination. Environ Sci Pollut Res 22, 7139–7146 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3890-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-014-3890-8

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