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Accuracy improvement of CFD modeling of a hydraulics with wood pellet combustion operating in a full-loop circulating fluidized bed combustor (CFBC)

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Abstract

Three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling of the hydrodynamic characteristics for the various sand particle sizes (10 μm, 250 μm, 482 μm, 750 μm, 1000 μm, and the actual particle size distribution (PSD)) in a 0.1 MWth pilot-scale full-loop circulating fluidized bed combustor (CFBC) was numerically investigated with a commercial CFD code, ANSYS FLUENT. Those were clearly validated with actual CFBC operating data. As the result, the sand particle size of the actual PSD was in good agreement. In order to accurately simulate wood pellet combustion, kinetic parameters for activation energy (Ea) and pre-exponential factor (A) for wood pellet decomposition and char combustion were obtained from lab-scale TGA experiments with wood pellet sample actually used for CFBC operation. The CFD modeling on wood pellet combustion were conducted with the selected sand particle size of actual PSD with improved char combustion model using the user-defined function (UDF) reflected kinetic parameters. The CFD modeling results were carefully compared with actual CFBC operating results. Therefore, our CFD simulation results for the concentrations of gas species (N2, CO2, O2, SO2, CO, NO, and N2O) at the gas exit in the cyclone were also in good agreement with the actual CFBC operating data. The accuracy improvements were increased from 1.9 times to 2.5 times due to our improved char combustion model using the UDF.

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Funding

This work was supported by the Technology Innovation Program (Project No.:20005788, Development of pollutant reduction combustion technology for multi-fuels custom) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy in Korea.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computational Science & Engineering Lab, Korea Institute of Energy Research, Daejeon, 34129, South Korea

    Sang Shin Park

  2. Clean Fuel Research Lab, Korea Institute of Energy Research, Daejeon, 34129, South Korea

    Ji-Hong Moon, Sang-Hee Yoon, Geon-Uk Baek, Sung-Jin Park, Sang-Jun Yoon, Jae-Goo Lee, Ho Won Ra, Sung-Min Yoon & Tae-Young Mun

  3. Greenhouse Gas Research Department, Korea Institute of Energy Research, Daejeon, 34129, South Korea

    Sungho Jo & Jae-Young Kim

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  1. Sang Shin Park
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Contributions

Sang Shin Park, Ji-Hong Moon, Tae-Young Mun, Sang-Hee Yoon, Geon-Uk Baek, Sungho Jo: Conceptualization; Sang Shin Park, Ji-Hong Moon, Tae-Young Mun: methodology; Sang Shin Park, Ji-Hong Moon, Tae-Young Mun, Sang-Hee Yoon, Geon-Uk Baek, Sung-Jin Park, Sang-Jun Yoon, Jae-Goo Lee, Ho Won Ra, Sung-Min Yoon: formal analysis and investigation; Sang Shin Park, Ji-Hong Moon, Tae-Young Mun: writing—original draft preparation; Sang Shin Park, Tae-Young Mun: writing review and editing; Tae-Young Mun: funding acquisition; Sang Shin Park: resources and software; Tae-Young Mun: project administration and Supervision.

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Correspondence to Tae-Young Mun.

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Park, S.S., Moon, JH., Yoon, SH. et al. Accuracy improvement of CFD modeling of a hydraulics with wood pellet combustion operating in a full-loop circulating fluidized bed combustor (CFBC). Biomass Conv. Bioref. 14, 7807–7833 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13399-022-03108-6

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