Effects of coal devolatilization model and turbulent reaction rate in numerical simulations of a large-scale pulverized-coal-fired boiler

상용 미분탄 보일러 연소해석에서 석탄 탈휘발 모델 및 난류반응속도의 영향 평가

Predicting coal combustion by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) requires a combination of complicated flow and reaction models for turbulence, radiation, particle flows, heterogeneous combustion, and gaseous reactions. There are various levels of models available for each of the phenomena, but the use of advanced models are significantly restricted in a large-scale boiler due to the computational costs and the balance of accuracy between adopted models. In this study, the influence of coal devolatilization model and turbulent mixing rate was assessed in CFD for a commercial boiler at 500 MWe capacity. For coal devolatilization, two models were compared: i) a simple model assuming single volatile compound based on proximate analysis and ii) advanced model of FLASHCHAIN with multiple volatile species. It was found out that the influence of the model was observed near the flames but the overall gas temperature and heat transfer rate to the boiler were very similar. The devolatilization rate was found not significant since the difference in near-flame temperature became noticeable when it was multiplied by 10 or 0.1. In contrast, the influence of turbulent mixing rate (constant A in the Magnussen model) was found very large. Considering the heat transfer rate and flame temperature, a value of 1.0 was recommended for the rate constant.