Cfd Simulations of Biomass Pyrolysis in a Fluidized Bed Reactor

In the current project, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) coupling reaction kinetics is used to study biomass pyrolysis in a fluidized bed reactor. The influences of the operating parameters, including the gas fluidization velocities, the biomass feeding rates, the pyrolysis temperatures and the amount of bed materials, on the production of bio-oils are studied. Four phases will be considered in the CFD Eulerian multiphase simulation. They are gas-mixture phase, solid bed phase, solid biomass phase and solid char phase. The standard k- turbulent model will be adopted to study the hydrodynamics of these 4 phases and SIMPLE method is used for the velocity-pressure coupling. CFD Eulerian multiphase model will couple with the global reaction model to realize the product distributions. The model includes the activation reaction k1, the pyrolysis reactions k2 and k3, the secondary decomposition reaction k4. Different operating conditions will be applied to predict the distributions of the biomass fluidized bed pyrolyzed tar (bio-oil), char and syngas. This is a two-year project. In the first year, the results from previous experimental work will be used to validate our simulation models. The simulation parameters will be determined based on physical measurable parameters. In the second year, the optimized operation conditions for such a system will be approached.

Project ID:PB10901-2532
External Project ID:MOST108-2221-E182-035-MY2