Predicting Effects of Operating Conditions on Biomass Fast Pyrolysis Using Particle-Level Simulation

Abstract

Fast pyrolysis of biomass materials is an effective means to convert biomass into useful energy products. The conversion process can be significantly affected by the properties of the biomass particle and the operating conditions. To obtain a better understanding of this process, a direct numerical simulation method was proposed and used to conduct particle-scale simulations. In this study, the lattice Boltzmann method was employed to solve the flow field and the intraparticle transport of heat and mass. A multistep pyrolysis kinetics mechanism was used to describe the chemical reactions that convert solid biomass to gaseous and solid products. The predicted evolutions of center temperature and solid mass fraction agreed well with the experimental data. The validation demonstrated that the present model was capable of revealing the detailed conversion process of biomass fast pyrolysis at the particle scale. Parametric studies were conducted to characterize the effects of particle size, particle aspect rat...