Lowering Nitrogen Oxide Emissions in a Coal-Powered 1000-MW Boiler

Burning of coal in power plants produces excessive nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions, which endanger people’s health. Proven and effective methods are highly needed to reduce NOx emissions. This paper constructs an echo state network (ESN) model of the interaction between NOx emissions and the operational parameters in terms of real historical data. The grey wolf optimization (GWO) algorithm is employed to improve the ESN model accuracy. The operational parameters are subsequently optimized via the GWO algorithm to finally cut down the NOx emissions. The experimental results show that the ESN model of the NOx emissions is more accurate than both of the LSTM and ELM models. The simulation results show NOx emission reduction in three selected cases by 16.5%, 15.6%, and 10.2%, respectively.