Investigation on the combustion of volatile organic compounds for a cleaner planet

Abstract

The incineration of municipal wastes involves the generation of volatile organic compounds which contribute to climate change. The present study attempted to optimize volatile organic compounds combustion during municipal solid wastes incineration. A detailed numerical computation has been performed to investigate the turbulent combustion of volatile organic compounds considering radiative heat transfer. Mass, momentum, heat transfer and concentrations of chemical species are numerically studied by solving the respective governing equations using the CFD code “Fluent”, which uses the finite volume method. The standard k-epsilon model has been used to simulate the turbulent flow. The turbulence-chemistry interaction is depicted by Eddy-Dissipation model. Discrete ordinate method is used for the modeling of the radiative heat transfer. The effects of inclination angle of the incinerator, walls thickness and walls emissivity on flow field, temperature and concentration of chemical species distributions and combustion effectiveness are investigated. The results showed that the inclination angle of the incinerator is effective on the flow structure, temperature and concentration of chemical species distributions. The efficiency of the combustion of organic compounds decreases with the increase of the inclination angle and Reynolds number. The variation of the walls emissivity modifies the combustion process in the incinerator. The thermo destruction efficiency depends on the inlet and outlet ports position.