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A computational framework for oxidative thermochemical conversion of powdered fuels

A computational framework for oxidative thermochemical conversion of powdered fuels

Date30th Mar 2021

Time03:30 PM

Venue Online

PAST EVENT

Details

In this seminar, a computational framework for modelling oxidative thermochemical conversion of powdered solid fuels will be presented. The framework is applied to simulate the thermochemical conversion of powdered high ash coal and biomass in a MILD inspired reactor. Experimental studies on this reactor were presented in seminar-1 - the key result is the flame stability map which shows that the stability of the primary oxidation zone is controlled by the ratio of ignition to flow time. Predictions of the reactor dynamics are obtained by numerically integrating the Reynolds averaged reactive Navier-Stokes equations (using ANSYS Fluent). The particles are tracked (time resolved tracking is used) with the Lagrangian Discrete Phase Modeling (DPM) approach in a Eulerian gas phase. The ignition time and the rate of devolatilization of the particles is estimated from the in-house Unified Ignition Devolatilization (UID) model coupled to the flow solver (through an User Defined Function feature in Fluent). The gas-phase chemistry is modelled by the eddy dissipation model. The wall heat loss from the reactor, important for estimating temperature profiles, is obtained using an energy balance for the entire domain. The temperature and species concentration profiles obtained with all the above models suggest that the reactor operates in the MILD mode. Comparisons of experimentally obtained temperature profiles with those evaluated numerically are in good agreement with each other. The modelling approach successfully predicts the operational regimes of the reactor. A noteworthy feature of the new framework is the use of a heat-transfer controlled particle devolatilization model without any adjustable constants; this enables the use of this framework as a predictive design tool.

Speakers

Mani Kalyani Ambatipudi (ME15D400)

Mechanical Engineering