Computer simulation saved more than $100,000 dollars in the design of a new coal preheating technology for low NOx burners by making it possible to get the design right the first time. The Gas Technology Institute (GTI) is developing a NOx reduction process under a cooperative agreement with the Department of Energy to provide a cost effective, combustion-based alternative to selective catalytic reduction (SCR). Development targets include NOx reduction to below 0.15 pounds per million Btu, reduced CO2 emissions, and a 55% electricity cost reduction compared to SCR. The technology combines GTI’s Methane de-NOX reburn technology with a pulverized coal (PC) preheating approach developed for utility pulverized coal combustors by the All-Russian Thermal Engineering Institute (VTI). Many variations of the initial burner design were evaluated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), making it possible for engineers to determine an optimized design concept. As a result, the initial prototype met the design objectives, eliminating the need to build and test additional prototypes at a cost that would have probably run into six figures each.