An advanced computational tool dedicated to deposition and slag dynamics modeling in coal gasifiers

In this paper the authors present the extension of smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH)modelling to model slag dynamics in industrial facilities affected by fouling and slagging.At the Institute for Energy Systems (Technische Universitat Munchen) within theframework project HotVeGas, a computational strategy to investigate deposition and slagdynamics in coal gasifiers was developed. The paper presents the recent results achievedin this field and how the proposed strategy may enhance the capabilities of commercialCFD codes regarding deposit formation, slagging dynamics and performance evaluationof the specific applications. Combustion and gasification are calculated using availableCFD codes. CFD data are hence post-processed applying a 3-step algorithm: i) ashparticle are tracked along the computational domain and their adhesion is calculatedusing visco-elastic models; ii) slag dynamics is further investigated using the SmoothedParticle Hydrodynamic (SPH) approach, and at last iii) the mesh reconstruction softwarebuilds the updated mesh for a further CFD computation. The mesh manipulation and theslag modelling algorithms are complementary computational tools to the Lagrangianparticle post-processor, which was already developed, validated and extensivelydescribed in previous works [1,2,3]. The present work deals with preliminary results ofthe work in progress obtained using Ansys Fluent 12 and the FORTRAN in-housesoftware specifically developed.