History
Reburning, or the staged introduction of
fuel into a combustion device, is based on
laboratory-scale studies in the early 1970’s
by Wendt and Sternling of Shell Development
Company. The first commercial-scale
application of this technology to control
NOx emissions was installed in Japan during
the same decade.
Subsequently, commercial-scale testing
was conducted in the U.S. and Europe,
mainly on electric utility boilers, but also
to some extent on municipal waste incinerators.
At present, natural gas, coal, and fuel
oil (in Italy) reburning applications are in
operation. The majority of the commercial
installations in the U.S. use natural gas as
the reburn fuel, but either natural gas, oil,
or coal can achieve about 50-60% NOx
reduction without adversely affecting
boiler operations.