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Title: Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of the Fuel Reactor in NETL's 50 kWth Chemical Looping Facility

Abstract

The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has explored chemical looping in its 50 kWth facility using a number of oxygen carriers. In this work, the results for methane conversion in the fuel reactor with a hematite iron ore as the oxygen carrier are analyzed. The experimental results are compared to predictions using CPFD's barracuda computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code with kinetics derived from the analysis of fixed bed data. It has been found through analytical techniques from thermal gravimetric analysis data as well as the same fixed bed data that the kinetics for the methane–hematite reaction follows a nucleation and growth or Johnson–Mehl–Avrami (JMA) reaction mechanism. barracuda does not accept nucleation and growth kinetics; however, there is enough sufficient variability of the solids dependence within the software such that the nucleation and growth behavior can be mimicked. This paper presents the method to develop the pseudo-JMA kinetics for barracuda extracted from the fixed bed data and then applies these values to the fuel reactor data to compare the computational results to experimental data obtained from 50 kWth unit for validation. Lastly, a fuel reactor design for near complete conversion is proposed.

Authors:
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [1]
  1. National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Morgantown, WV (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
National Energy Technology Lab. (NETL), Morgantown, WV (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE
OSTI Identifier:
1480054
Resource Type:
Journal Article: Accepted Manuscript
Journal Name:
Journal of Energy Resources Technology
Additional Journal Information:
Journal Volume: 139; Journal Issue: 4; Journal ID: ISSN 0195-0738
Publisher:
ASME
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
21 SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLANTS; Solids; Particulate matter; Fuels; Simulation; Computational fluid dynamics; Modeling; Methane; Oxygen; Temperature; Combustion

Citation Formats

Breault, Ronald W., Weber, Justin, Straub, Doug, and Bayham, Sam. Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of the Fuel Reactor in NETL's 50 kWth Chemical Looping Facility. United States: N. p., 2017. Web. doi:10.1115/1.4036324.
Breault, Ronald W., Weber, Justin, Straub, Doug, & Bayham, Sam. Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of the Fuel Reactor in NETL's 50 kWth Chemical Looping Facility. United States. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4036324
Breault, Ronald W., Weber, Justin, Straub, Doug, and Bayham, Sam. 2017. "Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of the Fuel Reactor in NETL's 50 kWth Chemical Looping Facility". United States. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4036324. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1480054.
@article{osti_1480054,
title = {Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling of the Fuel Reactor in NETL's 50 kWth Chemical Looping Facility},
author = {Breault, Ronald W. and Weber, Justin and Straub, Doug and Bayham, Sam},
abstractNote = {The National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has explored chemical looping in its 50 kWth facility using a number of oxygen carriers. In this work, the results for methane conversion in the fuel reactor with a hematite iron ore as the oxygen carrier are analyzed. The experimental results are compared to predictions using CPFD's barracuda computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code with kinetics derived from the analysis of fixed bed data. It has been found through analytical techniques from thermal gravimetric analysis data as well as the same fixed bed data that the kinetics for the methane–hematite reaction follows a nucleation and growth or Johnson–Mehl–Avrami (JMA) reaction mechanism. barracuda does not accept nucleation and growth kinetics; however, there is enough sufficient variability of the solids dependence within the software such that the nucleation and growth behavior can be mimicked. This paper presents the method to develop the pseudo-JMA kinetics for barracuda extracted from the fixed bed data and then applies these values to the fuel reactor data to compare the computational results to experimental data obtained from 50 kWth unit for validation. Lastly, a fuel reactor design for near complete conversion is proposed.},
doi = {10.1115/1.4036324},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1480054}, journal = {Journal of Energy Resources Technology},
issn = {0195-0738},
number = 4,
volume = 139,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue May 16 00:00:00 EDT 2017},
month = {Tue May 16 00:00:00 EDT 2017}
}

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Cited by: 8 works
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