Efficient combustion of large volumes of molten sulfur is a current and growing requirement when producing sulphuric acid.The design of a new series of injector nozzles for the atomization and distribution of molten sulphur has been completed,characterized,and demonstrated to be effective in the sulphur combustion process.Combustion processes are most effective with complete and uniform atomization and distribution of the liquid fuel within the reaction environment.Recent advances in injector technology and design have resulted in sprays with improved characteristics allowing increased reliability and performance equal to or exceeding industry standard equipment,while maintaining the process requirement of efficient fuel combustion.In this study,detailed characterization of the spray generated by the advanced injectors is shown to be superior to previous technology.Phase-Doppler Interferometry (PDI) measurements allow precision measurements of the droplet size,velocity,and concentration of current and new injector spray plume.The analysis is extended by utilizing the data from the laboratory measurements as inputs to multi-phase Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models of the molten sulphur combustion process.These detailed process simulations capture the spray development in the process environment.It is found that the enhanced design of the steam-jacket with the new injector technology will translate to longer spray nozzle life.Recent enhancements in computational hardware have allowed for more complex simulations at a reasonable cost/time,and design of spray injectors with tools including coupled fluid dynamics and heat transfer.Heat transfer from the furnace to the molten sulphur through the injector can be modeled and shown to improve reliability.Finally,an evaluation of possible injector positioning and orientation in the burner demonstrates that wall-wetting and fuel penetration length may be reduced with proper considerations.The overall gains in the molten sulphur combustion process are demonstrated to be significant and beneficial over a range of conditions.
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