Numerical Study of Coal Gasification Using Eulerian-Eulerian Multiphase Model

Gasification converts the carbon-containing material into a synthesis gas (syngas) which can be used as a fuel to generate electricity or used as a basic chemical building block for a large number of uses in the petrochemical and refining industries. Based on the mode of conveyance of the fuel and the gasifying medium, gasification can be classified into fixed or moving bed, fluidized bed, and entrained flow reactors. Entrained flow gasifiers normally feature dilute flow with small particle size and can be successfully modeled with the Discrete Phase Method (DPM). For the other types, the Eulerian-Eulerian (E-E) or the so called two-fluid multiphase model is a more appropriate approach. The E-E model treats the solid phase as a distinct interpenetrating granular “fluid” and it is the most general-purposed multi-fluid model. This approach provides transient, three-dimensional, detailed information inside the reactor which would otherwise be unobtainable through experiments due to the large scale, high pressure and/or temperature. In this paper, a transient, three-dimensional model of the Power Systems Development Facility (PSDF) transport gasifier will be presented to illustrate how Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) can be used for large-scale complicated geometry with detailed physics and chemistry. In the model, eleven species are included in the gas phase while four pseudo-species are assumed in the solid phase. A total of sixteen reactions, both homogeneous (involving only gas phase species) and heterogeneous (involving species in both gas and solid phases), are used to model the coal gasification chemistry. Computational results have been validated against PSDF experimental data from lignite to bituminous coals under both air and oxygen blown conditions. The PSDF gasifier geometry was meshed with about 70,000, hexahedra-dominated cells. A total of six cases with different coal, feed gas, and/or operation conditions have been performed. The predicted and measured temperature profiles along the gasifier and gas compositions at the outlet agreed fairly well.