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Title: Coupling DAEM and CFD for simulating biomass fast pyrolysis in fluidized beds

Journal Article · · Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [1];  [3]
  1. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  2. Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE (United States)
  3. Iowa State Univ., Ames, IA (United States)

We report results from computational simulations of an experimental, lab-scale bubbling bed biomass pyrolysis reactor that include a distributed activation energy model (DAEM) for the kinetics. In this study, we utilized multiphase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to account for the turbulent hydrodynamics, and this was combined with the DAEM kinetics in a multi-component, multi-step reaction network. Our results indicate that it is possible to numerically integrate the coupled CFD–DAEM system without significantly increasing computational overhead. It is also clear, however, that reactor operating conditions, reaction kinetics, and multiphase flow dynamics all have major impacts on the pyrolysis products exiting the reactor. We find that, with the same pre-exponential factors and mean activation energies, inclusion of distributed activation energies in the kinetics can shift the predicted average value of the exit vapor-phase tar flux and its statistical distribution, compared to single-valued activation-energy kinetics. Perhaps the most interesting observed trend is that increasing the diversity of the DAEM activation energies appears to increase the mean tar yield, all else being equal. As a result, these findings imply that accurate resolution of the reaction activation energy distributions will be important for optimizing biomass pyrolysis processes.

Research Organization:
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE)
Grant/Contract Number:
AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1238742
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1246545
Journal Information:
Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, Vol. 117, Issue C; ISSN 0165-2370
Publisher:
ElsevierCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 63 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (3)

Quick estimation of f(E) in the distributed activation energy model (DAEM): an inverse problem approach journal July 2019
Progress in understanding the four dominant intra-particle phenomena of lignocellulose pyrolysis: chemical reactions, heat transfer, mass transfer, and phase change journal January 2019
Performance analysis of a heat transfer and sub-grid chemical reaction distributed activation energy model for fire simulations journal November 2018