Modeling of single char combustion, including CO oxidation in its boundary layer

Abstract

The combustion of a char particle can be divided into a transient phase where its temperature increases as it is heated by oxidation, and heat transfer from the surrounding gas to an approximately constant temperature stage where gas phase reaction is important and which consumes most of the carbon and an extinction stage caused by carbon burnout. In this work, separate models were developed for the transient heating where gas phase reactions were unimportant and for the steady temperature stage where gas phase reactions were treated in detail. The transient char combustion model incorporates intrinsic char surface production of CO and CO{sub 2}, internal pore diffusion and external mass and heat transfer. The model provides useful information for particle ignition, burning temperature profile, combustion time, and carbon consumption rate. A gas phase reaction model incorporating the full set of 28 elementary C/H/O reactions was developed. This model calculated the gas phase CO oxidation reaction in the boundary layer at particle temperatures of 1250 K and 2500 K by using the carbon consumption rate and the burning temperature at the pseudo-steady state calculated from the temperature profile model but the transient heating was not included. This gas phase model can predict the gas species, and the temperature distributions in the boundary layer, the CO{sub 2}/CO ratio, and the location of CO oxidation. A mechanistic heat and mass transfer model was added to the temperature profile model to predict combustion behavior in a fluidized bed. These models were applied to data from the fluidized combustion of Newlands coal char particles. 52 refs., 60 figs.