Simulation of the Chemical Looping Reforming Process in the Fuel Reactor with a Bubble-Based Energy Minimization Multiscale Model

Abstract

Chemical looping reforming (CLR) is a novel hydrogen production technology, which has attracted great attention, owing to the benefits of lower cost and better concept of environmental protection. To investigate the CLR performance in the fuel reactor (FR), this study develops a multiphase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) reactive model to obtain a better understanding of complex gas–solid flow behavior and reactive characteristic during the CLR process. A bubble-based energy minimization multiscale (EMMS) approach is applied to account for the bubble effect on the gas–solid interaction. A two-fluid model is adopted with a kinetic theory of granular flow for closure. The distributions of concentrations of particles and gas species are obtained in the FR with Ni-based oxygen carriers by means of numerical simulation. This bubble-based EMMS model gives a more reasonable agreement with experimental results by a comparison of gas compositions at the outlet of the reactor.