Patent ID: 8425870

Claim:
A method for treating a gas stream comprising (A) providing a gas stream that contains water vapor, carbon dioxide, N2, carbon monoxide in a concentration less than 10,000 ppm, and NOx in an amount of up to 1,000 ppm; (B) mixing fuel and oxygen and combusting a portion of the oxygen in the mixture with said fuel in a chamber to form a hot oxidant stream emerging from said chamber that contains oxygen, wherein the residence time of said combustion in said chamber is 1-2 msec and long enough that said hot oxidant stream has a temperature higher than the temperature of said gas stream and said residence time is short enough that said hot oxidant stream contains products of said combustion including radicals selected from the group consisting of radicals corresponding to the formulas O, H, OH, C2H, CH2, CjH2j+1 or CjH2j−1 wherein j is 1-4, and mixtures of two or more of such radicals; (C) feeding the hot oxidant stream into the gas stream provided in step (A) to raise the temperature of said gas to a temperature higher than 1100 F that is higher than the temperature of the gas stream to which the hot oxidant stream is added, wherein the hot oxidant stream is added at a rate sufficient to convert carbon monoxide in the gas to carbon dioxide.