Modeling of the biomass combustion on a forward acting grate using XDEM

The grate firing system is one of the most common ways for the combustion of biomass because it is able to burn a broad range of fuels with only little or even no requirement for fuel preparation. In order to improve the fuel combustion efficiency, it is important to understand the details of the thermochemical process in such furnaces. However, the process is very complex due to many involved physical and chemical phenomena such as drying, pyrolysis, char combustion, gas phase reaction, two phase flow and many more. The main objective of this work is to study precisely the involved processes in biomass combustion on a forward acting grate and provide a detailed insight into the local and global conversion phenomena. For this purpose, XDEM as an Euler-Lagrange model is used, in which the fluid phase is a continuous phase and each particle is tracked with a Lagrangian approach. The model has been compared with experimental data. Very good agreements between simulation and measurement have been achieved, proving the ability of the model to predict the biomass combustion under study on the grate. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd.