Abstract
In a catalytic combustion of ventilation air methane, one of the key factors determining the reactor performance is the geometry of the reactor. It should be designed to provide maximum energy conversion at minimum catalyst usage and operating cost. This numerical study is conducted to investigate the catalytic combustion of ventilation air methane from a gassy underground mine in a circular straight and helical reactor channel with twisted tape insert. A three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics model which considers conservation of mass, momentum, energy, and species together with chemical reactions, and constitutive relations for species properties and reactions kinetics was developed and validated against the previously published data. The effect of several key factors affecting the catalytic combustion performance such as inlet Reynolds number, twisted tape ratio, and reactor length are evaluated to obtain the optimum reactor parameters. For evaluation purpose, the reaction performance of the studied reactors will be compared to the straight reactor without twisted tape which is set as a baseline. The results give a firm confirmation on the superior performance of the reactors with twisted tape insert as compared to those without. In addition, it is found that helical reactors generate higher net power as compared to their respective straight reactor counterpart despite having lower FoM due to larger catalyst area. Interestingly, the higher twisting ratio offers better performance in terms of net power as well as FoM. Overall, the results highlight the potential of twisted tape insert application in catalytic combustion.
Highlights
Underground coal mine activities, especially gassy mines, are a major contributor to emissions of methane, an important greenhouse gas that has global warming potential 20 times higher than CO2 .Methane emissions from coal mining account for about 22% of anthropogenic emissions from energy sector [1]
In the ourpresent study to evaluate the reaction of straight and helical reactors of which is equipped with study, we extended ourperformance study to evaluate the reaction performance straight and helical twisted tape insertisby using computational fluidinsert dynamics (CFD)
A numerical investigation has been to evaluate of themethane, reaction performance a straight and helical coil reactor with twisted tape conducted insert for combustion inof Ventilation
Summary
Underground coal mine activities, especially gassy mines, are a major contributor to emissions of methane, an important greenhouse gas that has global warming potential 20 times higher than CO2. Methane emissions from coal mining account for about 22% of anthropogenic emissions from energy sector [1]. Methane is continuously produced in the active mining area during the mineral deposit excavation and released to the atmosphere through the main ventilation shaft. Kholod et al [4] suggested that methane emissions will grow considerably in the coming years and estimated total coal mine methane emissions to reach 432 billion cubic meters per year by 2100. Despite its low methane concentration (mostly below 1% [5]) which makes conventional combustion an insurmountable task, ventilation air methane is still a potential alternative fuel source that can be utilized with suitable methods and technologies
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