Development of a Kinetic Model for Industrial Entrained Flow Coal Gasifiers

Abstract

The characteristics of the industrial Texaco entrained flow coal gasifier are numerically studied in this paper. A kinetic model is proposed by dividing the gasifier into two zones to obtain the temperature and product concentration distribution along the reactor. These two zones are the pyrolysis–combustion zone and the reduction zone. The pyrolysis–combustion zone is modeled using the stoichiometry method. A detailed investigation was carried out on the gasification reaction rates in the reduction zone. The particle swarm optimization technique is introduced in this paper to address the lack of heterogeneous reaction kinetic parameters based on the random pore model for the specific feed Shenfu coal, and the huge deviation of the industrial product gas composition from the theoretical composition at equilibrium state. With the evaluated optimum kinetic parameters, robust agreement is achieved between the model outputs and the industrial data. Moreover, a sensitivity analysis related to the O2-to-coal ratio and coal slurry concentration was carried out in light of the proposed model.