IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/energy/v315y2025ics0360544225000970.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Nitrogen sources and formation routes of nitric oxide from pure ammonia combustion

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Xiangtao
  • Si, Jicang
  • Wang, Guochang
  • Wu, Mengwei
  • Mi, Jianchun

Abstract

This study is to investigate firstly the nitrogen sources and formation routes of nitric oxide (NO) from pure ammonia combustion. A well stirred reactor (WSR) is used for chemical processes while a jet-in-hot-coflow (JHC) configuration of ammonia flames is employed to account for the flow impact. Different combustion regimes are simulated by changing various parameters in both WSR and JHC cases. Results reveal that the production of thermal-NO increases with TWSR (WSR working temperature) at TWSR ≥ 1900–2500 K, below which it is negligible. In contrast, the fuel-NO exhibits a non-monotonic behavior with TWSR: initially increasing, then decreasing, and eventually increasing again. Interestingly, it is found that reactions within the Extended Zeldovich route play a crucial role in reducing the fuel-NO. The simulated JHC flames of pure ammonia indicate that MILD combustion minimizes both fuel- and thermal-NO emissions. Furthermore, the fuel-NO always emerges as the dominant source of NO, no matter which combustion regime occurs. The thermal-NO however remains negligible in pure ammonia combustion except in those cases of enriched-oxygen and extremely-high ambient temperatures.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Xiangtao & Si, Jicang & Wang, Guochang & Wu, Mengwei & Mi, Jianchun, 2025. "Nitrogen sources and formation routes of nitric oxide from pure ammonia combustion," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:315:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225000970
    DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.134455
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544225000970
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.energy.2025.134455?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wu, Binyang & Wang, Yusong & Wang, Decheng & Feng, Yongming & Jin, Shouying, 2023. "Generation mechanism and emission characteristics of N2O and NOx in ammonia-diesel dual-fuel engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 284(C).
    2. Wang, Yang & Sun, Jingyun & Liu, Qianqian & Chen, Longwei & Gu, Mingyan & Liu, Dongming & Huang, Xiangyong & Wang, Shuang, 2024. "NOx formation mechanism of plasma assisted ammonia combustion: A reactive molecular dynamics study," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    3. Shi, Guodong & Li, Pengfei & Li, Kesheng & Hu, Fan & Liu, Qian & Zhou, Haoyu & Liu, Zhaohui, 2023. "Insight into NOx formation characteristics of ammonia oxidation in N2 and H2O atmospheres," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    4. Tian, Junjian & Liu, Xiang & Shi, Hao & Yao, Yurou & Ni, Zhanshi & Meng, Kengsheng & Hu, Peng & Lin, Qizhao, 2024. "Experimental study on MILD combustion of methane under non-preheated condition in a swirl combustion furnace," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 363(C).
    5. Li, Yunlong & Feng, Lai & Chen, Wei, 2024. "Chemical effect of H2 on NH3 combustion in an O2 environment via molecular dynamics simulations," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 308(C).
    6. Lang, Maochun & Su, Yan & Wang, Yaodong & Zhang, Yulin & Wang, Benyou & Chen, Song, 2024. "Experimental study on the effects of pilot injection strategy on combustion and emission characteristics of ammonia/diesel dual fuel engine under low load," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 303(C).
    7. Wang, Zhe & Zhang, Tianyue & Wang, Du & Wang, Shuofeng & Ji, Changwei & Wang, Huaiyu & Yang, Haowen & Zhai, Yifan, 2024. "A comparative study on the premixed ammonia/hydrogen/air combustion with spark ignition and turbulent jet ignition," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 307(C).
    8. Chai, Wai Siong & Bao, Yulei & Jin, Pengfei & Tang, Guang & Zhou, Lei, 2021. "A review on ammonia, ammonia-hydrogen and ammonia-methane fuels," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    9. Sorrentino, Giancarlo & Sabia, Pino & Bozza, Pio & Ragucci, Raffaele & de Joannon, Mara, 2019. "Low-NOx conversion of pure ammonia in a cyclonic burner under locally diluted and preheated conditions," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 254(C).
    10. Shi, Cheng & Cheng, Tengfei & Yang, Xiyu & Zhang, Zheng & Duan, Ruiling & Li, Xujia, 2024. "Implementation of various injection rate shapes in an ammonia/diesel dual-fuel engine with special emphasis on combustion and emissions characteristics," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 304(C).
    11. Wang, G. & Si, J. & Xu, M. & Mi, J., 2019. "MILD combustion versus conventional bluff-body flame of a premixed CH4/air jet in hot coflow," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 187(C).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Cheng, Tengfei & Duan, Ruiling & Li, Xueyi & Yan, Xiaodong & Yang, Xiyu & Shi, Cheng, 2025. "Progressive split injection strategies to combustion and emissions improvement of a heavy-duty diesel engine with ammonia enrichment," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 316(C).
    2. Chen, Yanhui & Zhang, Jian & Zhang, Zhiqing & Zhang, Bin & Hu, Jingyi & Zhong, Weihuang & Ye, Yanshuai, 2024. "Effect of ammonia energy ratio and load on combustion and emissions of an ammonia/diesel dual-fuel engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 302(C).
    3. Yan, Beibei & Wu, Zhaoting & Zhou, Shengquan & Lv, Jingwen & Liu, Xiaoyun & Wu, Wenzhu & Chen, Guanyi, 2024. "A critical review of NH3–H2 combustion mechanisms," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 196(C).
    4. Cui, Jingchen & Chen, Weize & Wang, Bing & Fan, Yuanzhi & Tian, Hua & Long, Wuqiang & Liu, Xing, 2024. "Effects of relative position of injectors on the performance of ammonia/diesel two-stroke engines," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    5. Sun, Wanchen & Wang, Xiaonan & Guo, Liang & Zhang, Hao & Zeng, Wenpeng & Lin, Shaodian & Zhu, Genan & Jiang, Mengqi & Ma, Xiaoyu, 2025. "Study on effects of EGR and injection strategies on the combustion and emission characteristics of ammonia/diesel dual-fuel engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 315(C).
    6. Elbanna, Ahmed Mohammed & Cheng, Xiaobei, 2024. "The role of charge reactivity in ammonia/diesel dual fuel combustion in compression ignition engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 306(C).
    7. Wei, Wenwen & Li, Gesheng & Zhang, Zunhua & Long, Yanxiang & Zhang, Hanyuyang & Huang, Yong & Zhou, Mengni & Wei, Yi, 2023. "Effects of ammonia addition on the performance and emissions for a spark-ignition marine natural gas engine," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    8. Ahmed, Shoaib & Li, Tie & Yi, Ping & Chen, Run, 2023. "Environmental impact assessment of green ammonia-powered very large tanker ship for decarbonized future shipping operations," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    9. Bao, Jianhui & Lei, Jian & Tian, Guohong & Wang, Xiaomeng & Wang, Huaiyu & Shi, Cheng, 2024. "A review of the application development and key technologies of rotary engines under the background of carbon neutrality," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 311(C).
    10. Moosazadeh, Mohammad & Mansourimarand, Asal & Ajori, Shahram & Taghikhani, Vahid & Yoo, ChangKyoo, 2025. "Waste-to-Ammonia: A sustainable pathway for energy transition," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    11. Wang, Siqi & Chong, Cheng Tung & Xie, Tian & Józsa, Viktor & Ng, Jo-Han, 2023. "Ammonia/methane dual-fuel injection and Co-firing strategy in a swirl flame combustor for pollutant emissions control," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 281(C).
    12. Zha, Xiaojian & Zhang, Zewu & Zhao, Zhenghong & Yang, Long & Mao, Wenchao & Wu, Fan & Li, Xiaoshan & Luo, Cong & Zhang, Liqi, 2024. "Comparative study on co-firing characteristics of normal and superfine pulverized coal blended with NH3 under the MILD combustion mode," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 305(C).
    13. Zhang, Tianyue & Ji, Changwei & Wang, Zhe & Wang, Shuofeng & Yang, Haowen & Wang, Huaiyu & Jiang, Nan, 2024. "Experimental investigation on the combustion characteristics of ultra-lean premixed hydrogen/air using turbulent jet ignition," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    14. Mashruk, Syed & Kovaleva, Marina & Alnasif, Ali & Chong, Cheng Tung & Hayakawa, Akihiro & Okafor, Ekenechukwu C. & Valera-Medina, Agustin, 2022. "Nitrogen oxide emissions analyses in ammonia/hydrogen/air premixed swirling flames," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 260(C).
    15. Liang, He & Yan, Xingqing & Shi, Enhua & Wang, Xinfei & Qi, Chang & Ding, Jianfei & Zhang, Lianzhuo & Chen, Lei & Lv, Xianshu & Yu, Jianliang, 2024. "Effect of hydrogen blending on ammonia/air explosion characteristics under wide equivalence ratio," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 297(C).
    16. Zhang, Xiaolei & Tian, Jiangping & Cui, Zechuan & Yin, Shuo & Ye, Mingyuan & Yang, Hongen & Zhou, Qingxing & Shi, Song & Wei, Kaile, 2024. "Visualization study on the flame propagation and distribution characteristics and exploration of optimal injection strategy in ammonia/diesel dual direct injection mode," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 307(C).
    17. Sharma, Debojit & Lee, Bok Jik & Dash, Sukanta Kumar & Reddy, V. Mahendra, 2023. "Experimental and numerical investigation on ultra-high intensity premixed LPG- air combustion in a novel porous stack burner," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 272(C).
    18. Fordoei, Esmaeil Ebrahimi & Boyaghchi, Fateme Ahmadi, 2022. "Influence of wall thermal conditions on the ignition, flame structure, and temperature behaviors in air-fuel, oxygen-enhanced, and oxy-fuel combustion under the MILD and high-temperature regimes," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    19. Zhang, Haifeng & Ju, Shuai & Jin, Xin & Yuan, Yan & Wu, Yingji & Nadda, Ashok Kumar & Pugazhendhi, Arivalagan & Cai, Liping & Xia, Changlei, 2022. "A review of sensor applications towards precise control of pyrolysis of solid waste and biomasses," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    20. Liu, Xing & Wang, Ying & Bai, Yuanqi & Yang, Wenxu, 2023. "Development of reduced and optimized mechanism for ammonia/ hydrogen mixture based on genetic algorithm," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 270(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:energy:v:315:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225000970. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.