Modification of perforated plate in fluidized-bed combustor chamber through computational fluid dynamics simulation

Abstract

The combustion of solid fuels in a combustion chamber can be perfect if all the fuel included can burn out, and nothing remains. The combustion chamber requires sufficient air to burn all the fuel; therefore, meeting the air supply requires modifications with various considerations. The perforated plate modeled through computational fluid dynamics (CFD) was modified to investigate the excess air supply into the combustion chamber. The CFD simulation modeled in this study was used to validate the results of the experiments carried out with the previous fluidized-bed combustor technology. The simulation results show that the temperature increased for all fuels tested in geometry-2 compared with geometry-1. The best boiler efficiency from the simulation results is in geometry-1 for 45% oil palm midrib fuel with a mass flow rate of 7.78 kg/s. The maximum radiation was recorded from geometry-2 at a variation of 66.939 W/m2, with a heat loss level of 1.10 W/m2. Overall, the simulation was performed by modifying the fuel floor plate in geometry-2 to increase the temperature and radiation with lower heat loss.

Keywords

• Perforated plate
• Fluidized-bed combustor
• Modification
• Computational fluid dynamics
• Biomass fuel
• Modelling simulation