Predicting the solid circulation rate in chemical looping combustion systems using pressure drop measurements

• A model has been developed to predict the SCR using pressure drop measurements.
• A simple kinematic model has been developed to predict riser solid holdup profile.
• The SCR model has taken into account the reduced solid flux in the riser.
• The proposed model predicts SCR of CLC systems with a deviation of less than 15%.
• The SCR model does not require any input data obtained experimentally.

In chemical looping combustion systems, accurate measurement of the solid circulation rate (SCR) is crucial for optimising the system performance. Conventionally, the SCR is predicted using the riser total pressure drop leading to an overestimation of up to 70%. In this work, a model has been proposed for the SCR prediction using the pressure drop at the top section of the riser. The height of this top section was determined by the riser gas–solid flow characteristics, namely, the axial solid holdup profile and lateral solid flux profile. A kinematic model was developed to predict the axial solid holdup profile and the reduced solid flux model developed by Rhodes et al. (1992) was employed to predict the mass fraction of upwards flowing solids. The prediction results of the proposed model were validated against the experimental data obtained in this work and those reported in the literature, where the prediction accuracy of SCR was significantly improved (by up to 60%) with a deviation of around 15%.

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