Oxy-coal combustion in an entrained flow reactor: Application of specific char and volatile combustion and radiation models for oxy-firing conditions

The deployment of oxy-fuel combustion in utility boilers is one of the major options for CO2 capture. However, combustion under oxy-firing conditions differs from conventional air-firing combustion, e.g., in the aspect of radiative heat transfer, coal conversion and pollutants formation. In this work, a numerical study on pulverised coal combustion was conducted to verify the applicability and accuracy of several sub-models refined for oxy-fuel conditions, e.g., gaseous radiative property model, gas-phase combustion mechanism and heterogeneous char reaction model. The sub-models were implemented in CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations of combustion of three coals under air-firing and various oxy-firing (21–35% vol O2 in O2/CO2 mixture) conditions in an EFR (entrained flow reactor). The predicted coal burnouts and gaseous emissions were compared against experimental results. A good agreement between the simulations and experiments was achieved, indicating a good applicability and reliability of the refined sub-models and suitability of use of the experimentally derived kinetic data in coal devolatilisation and char oxidation sub-models. The sub-models and the practices implemented in this work can be used in large-scale oxy-fuel combustion processes for reliable design and optimization.

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Álvarez González, Lucía, Yin, C., Riaza Benito, Juan, Pevida García, Covadonga, Pis Martínez, José Juan, Rubiera González, Fernando
Format: artículo biblioteca
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2013-12
Subjects:Computational fluid dynamics, Oxy-coal combustion, Radiative heat transfer, Char combustion,
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/103099
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Summary:The deployment of oxy-fuel combustion in utility boilers is one of the major options for CO2 capture. However, combustion under oxy-firing conditions differs from conventional air-firing combustion, e.g., in the aspect of radiative heat transfer, coal conversion and pollutants formation. In this work, a numerical study on pulverised coal combustion was conducted to verify the applicability and accuracy of several sub-models refined for oxy-fuel conditions, e.g., gaseous radiative property model, gas-phase combustion mechanism and heterogeneous char reaction model. The sub-models were implemented in CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) simulations of combustion of three coals under air-firing and various oxy-firing (21–35% vol O2 in O2/CO2 mixture) conditions in an EFR (entrained flow reactor). The predicted coal burnouts and gaseous emissions were compared against experimental results. A good agreement between the simulations and experiments was achieved, indicating a good applicability and reliability of the refined sub-models and suitability of use of the experimentally derived kinetic data in coal devolatilisation and char oxidation sub-models. The sub-models and the practices implemented in this work can be used in large-scale oxy-fuel combustion processes for reliable design and optimization.