A Computational Study of Entrained Flow Furnace with Swirl Burner Configuration and Low Turbulence Intensity Flow

Abstract

This paper presents a computational study on air–fuel combustion of bituminous coal in a 16 kWth test facility using low-Reynolds number (Re) turbulence models, along with radiation and char combustion sub-models suitably selected according to the furnace environment. The performance of three different turbulence models was investigated by comparing their predictions with the experimental measurements of temperature and species concentrations. A comparison of the numerical and experimental results shows that the shear stress transport (SST) k-ω model and the SST k-ω model with low-Re correction predict mean profiles of temperature and species concentrations reasonably well but significantly underpredict temperature in the core of the furnace at axial locations away from the burner. On the other hand, the transition SST k-ω model yields a better congruency between the experimental and numerical results and predicts the temperature and species concentrations with enhanced accuracy in comparison with the other turbulence models used in the present work.