Numerical Modeling of Biomass and Solid Waste-Based Syngas Fuels Combustion

Abstract

The combustion of syngas fuels in gas turbine combustor is presented in this paper. The principal objective is to test the performance of the combustion process using non-conventional fuels produced from the gasification of biomass and solid waste. Three dimensional syngas combustion simulations were performed in this study. The mixture fraction/pdf and the P1 radiation models were used to model the non-premixed turbulent combustion. The syngas fuels are derived from the gasification of wood saw dust, wooden pellet and nonrecycled solid waste plastics. The effect of syngas fuel compositions and lower heating values on the combustion process was investigated. The power from the combustor was kept constant at 60 kW for all the syngas fuels tested in this study. The results show a decrease of the peak gas temperature inside the combustor for the syngas fuels compared to conventional fossil gas fuel. The peak gas temperature inside the combustor decreases by 16.1%, 19.8%, and 17.2% respectively for the syngas 1 (derived from plastic waste), syngas 2 (derived from wood saw dust) and syngas 3 (derived from wooden pellets) compared to natural gas fuel. The highest average NO mass fraction at the combustor exit was obtained with syngas 1 (plastic waste) compared to the other syngas fuels due to the high lower heating value. The highest average CO2 mass fraction at the exit of the combustor was obtained with syngas 2 (wood saw dust) compared to the other syngas due to the high amount of CO2 in the syngas fuel (15%).