Visual Experimental Analysis of the Residence Time of Flexible Biomass Particles in a Baffled Rotating Cylindrical Tube

Abstract

Drying of biomass or biofuels is a major issue during pretreatment because of a high initial moisture content, which results in low energy efficiency and combustion temperature and high emission of hydrocarbons. As the motion behaviors of biomass fuels play an important role in the drying process, it is of great significance to investigate the motion of biomass. In this study, visualization experiments on the motion of flexible nonspherical biomass particles in a baffled rotating cylindrical tube were performed. The residence time of biomass particles was obtained and analyzed by taking into account gas velocity, mass flow rate of flexible biomass, initial moisture content of biomass particles, slope and rotational speed of the cylindrical tube, and other parameters under several operational conditions. The results indicated that the mean residence time of flexible biomass increased with the increase in the mass flow rate and initial moisture content and decreased with the increase of the cylindrical tube’s rotational speed and slope and the velocity of the gas phase. Despite the quite small sliding friction coefficient between the tube’s inner wall and biomass particles, a larger slope could lead to stronger sliding friction force in the axial direction when these biomass particles moved to the bottom of the tube. Mean residence time is observed to decrease significantly and gradually decrease with the increase in rotational speed from 6 to 9 rpm and from 9 to 18 rpm, respectively. In addition, the mean residence time increased from 78.5 to 99.4 s when the inlet mass flow rate increased from 60 to 240 kg/h without the gas phase, but it increased from 57.4 to 78.5 s within the same range of the inlet mass flow rate at a gas velocity of 0.3 m/s.