PARAMETRIC NUMERICAL STUDY OF THE REACTING FLOW FIELD OF A COAL SLURRY ENTRAINED GASIFIER

Considering the importance of the detailed resolution of the reacting flow field inside a gasifier, the objective of this study lies on to investigate the effect of important variables to influence on the reacting flow and thereby to clarify the physical feature occurring inside the gasifier using a comprehensive gasifier computer program. Thus, in this study the gasification process of a 1.0 ton/day gasifier are numerically modeled using the Fluent code. And parametric investigation has been made in terms of swirl intensity and aspect ratio of the gasifier. Doing this, special attention is given on the detailed change of the reacting flow field inside a gasifier especially with the change of this kind of design and operation parameters. Based on this study, a number of useful conclusions can be drawn in the view of flow pattern inside gasifier together with the consequence of the gasification process caused by the change of the flow pattern. Especially, swirl effect gives rise to a feature of a central delayed recirculation zone, which is different from the typical strong central recirculation appeared near the inlet nozzle. The delayed feature of central recirculation appearance could be explained by the increased axial momentum due to the substantial amount of the presence of the coal slurry occupying over the entire gasifier in gasification process. Further, the changes of flow pattern are explained in detail with the gasifier aspect ratio. In general, the results obtained are physically acceptable in parametric study.