• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.165-174
• /
• 2010

The numerical modeling of a coal gasification reaction occurring in an entrained flow coal gasifier is presented in this study. The purposes of this study are to develop a reliable evaluation method of coal gasifier not only for the basic design but also further system operation optimization using a CFD(Computational Fluid Dynamics) method. The coal gasification reaction consists of a series of reaction processes such as water evaporation, coal devolatilization, heterogeneous char reactions, and coal-off gaseous reaction in two-phase, turbulent and radiation participating media. Both numerical and experimental studies are made for the 1.0 ton/day entrained flow coal gasifier installed in the Korea Institute of Energy Research (KIER). The comprehensive computer program in this study is made basically using commercial CFD program by implementing several subroutines necessary for gasification process, which include Eddy-Breakup model together with the harmonic mean approach for turbulent reaction. Further Lagrangian approach in particle trajectory is adopted with the consideration of turbulent effect caused by the non-linearity of drag force, etc. The program developed is successfully evaluated against experimental data such as profiles of temperature and gaseous species concentration together with the cold gas efficiency. Further intensive investigation has been made in terms of the size distribution of pulverized coal particle, the slurry concentration, and the design parameters of gasifier. These parameters considered in this study are compared and evaluated each other through the calculated syngas production rate and cold gas efficiency, appearing to directly affect gasification performance. Considering the complexity of entrained coal gasification, even if the results of this study looks physically reasonable and consistent in parametric study, more efforts of elaborating modeling together with the systematic evaluation against experimental data are necessary for the development of an reliable design tool using CFD method.