Combustion Characterization of Pulverized Coal and Biomass Co-firing Using Computational Fluid Dynamics Modeling

This  study  aims to investigate  the  combustion  behavior  of  pulverized  coal  and  biomass  co-firing  at  320  kW  thermal  throughput  with  20%  excess  air  in  a  semi-industry  pulverized  biomass  furnace  with  a  pre-combustion  chamber.  This  study  presents  a  2D  axis-symmetry  numerical  study  considering  co-firing  combustion  under  Reynolds-average  Navier-Stokes  assumption  using  a  commercial  Computational  Fluid  Dynamics  (CFD)  code  ANSYS  Fluent  2020  R1.  Five  different  co-firing  cases  (0%,  25%,  50%,  75%  and  100%  biomass  thermal  sharing)  were  analyzed  and  four  parameters  that  affected  combustion  characteristics  (swirl  number,  particle  size,  fraction  of  volatile,  and  fraction  of  fixed  carbon)  will be investigated.  Numerical simulation  will be  used  to  predict  combustion  characteristics  (temperature  distribution,  thermal  output,  and  mass  fraction  of  each  fuel  component),  exhaust  gas  emissions  (NO_X,  SO₂,  CO,  CO₂,  and  O₂),  and  unburned  particles  release. The study expects to demonstrate the potential reduction on pollutants from combustion and the effects of pulverized coal and biomass cofiring on combustion performance. The results of this study will be useful for the design of biomass and coal pulverized furnaces in the future.