Comprehensive modelling of pulverized coal combustion in a vortex combustor

This paper presents a comprehensive numerical modelling of the strongly swirling gas-particle turbulent flow and pulverized coal combustion in a novel vortex combustor (VC) recently developed for commercial heating applications. A comprehensive two-dimensional coal combustion model is developed which incorporates a new algebraic Reynolds stress turbulence model (ASM). The numerical results for an 88 kW coal fired VC describe the detailed characteristics of the gas-particle flow and combustion in terms of gas velocities, turbulence quantities, temperature, species concentrations, particle density, trajectories, burnout time and residence time, which are important to the design and operation of the VC.