Investigation of Coal-biomass Catalytic Gasification using Experiments, Reaction Kinetics and Computational Fluid Dynamics
- Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States)
- Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States)
- Northeastern Univ., Boston, MA (United States)
A collaborative effort involving experiments, kinetic modeling, and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was used to understand co-gasification of coal-biomass mixtures. The overall goal of the work was to determine the key reactive properties for coal-biomass mixed fuels. Sub-bituminous coal was mixed with biomass feedstocks to determine the fluidization and gasification characteristics of hybrid poplar wood, switchgrass and corn stover. It was found that corn stover and poplar wood were the best feedstocks to use with coal. The novel approach of this project was the use of a red mud catalyst to improve gasification and lower gasification temperatures. An important results was the reduction of agglomeration of the biomass using the catalyst. An outcome of this work was the characterization of the chemical kinetics and reaction mechanisms of the co-gasification fuels, and the development of a set of models that can be integrated into other modeling environments. The multiphase flow code, MFIX, was used to simulate and predict the hydrodynamics and co-gasification, and results were validated with the experiments. The reaction kinetics modeling was used to develop a smaller set of reactions for tractable CFD calculations that represented the experiments. Finally, an efficient tool was developed, MCHARS, and coupled with MFIX to efficiently simulate the complex reaction kinetics.
- Research Organization:
- Virginia Polytechnic Inst. and State Univ. (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg, VA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Fossil Energy (FE); National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL) (United States)
- Contributing Organization:
- Utah State Univ., Logan, UT (United States); Univ. of Delaware, Newark, DE (United States); Northeastern Univ., Boston, MA (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FE0005476
- OSTI ID:
- 1329004
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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