Convolutional neural network approach for reduction of nitrogen oxides emissions from pulverized coal-fired boiler in a power plant for sustainable environment.

•The proposed model reduced the NOx emissions from a coal-fired power plant by 50.9%.•The proposed model may help power plants achieve environmental sustainability goals.•1d-CNN outperformed with least testing RMSE compared to ANN and LSTM.•1d-CNN was found computationally inexpensive compared to ANN and LSTM.•TLSO reached the global minimum relatively quickly.