Assessment of a detailed biomass pyrolysis kinetic scheme in multiscale simulations of a single-particle pyrolyzer and a pilot-scale entrained flow pyrolyzer

Xi Gao, Liqiang Lu, Mehrdad Shahnam, William A. Rogers, Kristin Smith, Katherine Gaston, David Robichaud, M. Brennan Pecha, Meagan Crowley, Peter N. Ciesielski, Paulo Amaral Debiagi, Tiziano Faravelli, Gavin Wiggins, Charles E.A. Finney, James E. Parks

Research output: Journal PublicationArticlepeer-review

48 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A detailed biomass pyrolysis kinetic scheme was assessed in the multiscale simulations of a single-particle pyrolyzer with slow pyrolysis and a pilot-scale entrained flow pyrolyzer with fast pyrolysis. The detailed kinetic scheme of biomass pyrolysis developed by the CRECK group consists of 32 reactions and 58 species. A multiscale simulation model was developed, where the CRECK kinetics was employed to simulate biomass pyrolysis reactions, a one-dimensional particle model was utilized to simulate the intraparticle transport phenomena, and the particle-in-cell (PIC) model was employed to simulate the hydrodynamics. The multiscale model was first applied to simulate a single-particle pyrolysis experiment. The simulation with nonisothermal particles matched the experimental data better than the simulation with isothermal particles. Then the multiscale model was applied to simulate the pilot-scale entrained flow pyrolyzer. In this case, the simulation with isothermal particles matched the experimental data better than the simulation with nonisothermal particles. The reason for this difference might be that the kinetics itself already partially included the intraparticle transport effect as it was fitted using both TGA data (slow pyrolysis of small size biomass) and fluidized bed data (fast pyrolysis of relatively large size biomass). This study provides some insights into biomass pyrolysis kinetics development and pyrolyzer multiscale simulation for a future study.

Original languageEnglish
Article number129347
JournalChemical Engineering Journal
Volume418
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Aug 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Biomass
  • CFD
  • Kinetics
  • MFiX
  • Multiscale
  • Pyrolysis

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • General Chemistry
  • Environmental Chemistry
  • General Chemical Engineering
  • Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

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