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Description
The objective of this study is to compare combustion pollutants produced from biogas &, their fossil fuel counterpart, natural gas to determine optimum combustion conditions. The analysis was broken up into pollutant classification, combustion model selection, and regression model selection. Pollutants are evaluated based on global warming potential, local air quality standards, and effective heat transfer in order to determine which combustion conditions are preferable. The four pollutants that are considered are carbon dioxide (CO2), nitrous oxide (N2O), nitrogen oxide (NOX), and carbon monoxide (CO). The combustion model utilized for this study was a Chemkin perfectly stirred reactor with kinetic pathways created by the CRECK Polimi Database. The Chemkin model was chosen to replicate a boiler and would run combustion scenarios with varying amounts of heat extracted from the combustion chamber to control the combustion temperature. In order to rank the combustion outputs, a logistic regression was developed using the least toxic outcomes to make a threshold for the combustion processes. All this information makes a strong framework to classify the data produced for the study and any additional data that are generated. The results of the study made it clear that there is no combustion condition in which all the pollutants can be minimized, mainly because the carbon monoxide levels rebound as the combustion temperature falls. However, the study did determine that reducing the combustion temperature and the relative methane content of the fuel air mixture results in lower pollutant outputs. The relative methane contents effect on the combustion pollutants was determined by the fuel gases performing better as the biogas content was increased.
