Numerical study of hydrodynamics with surface heat transfer in a bubbling fluidized-bed reactor applied to fast pyrolysis of rice husk

- Effects of inlet gas velocity and temperature of heat sources were studied.
- Effect of rice husk size on the distribution of binary mixture was analyzed.
- The segregation index was calculated to evaluate the mixing of solid particles.
- Relations between solid mixing and heat transfer in a pyrolyzer were investigated.
- All results were contributed to the performance improvement of pyrolysis process.

The present study investigates the hydrodynamics and heat transfer phenomena that occur during the biomass fast pyrolysis process. A numerical approach that combines a two-dimensional Eulerian multi-fluid model and the kinetic theory of granular flow has been applied to simulate the gas-solid flow in a bubbling fluidized-bed reactor. In this study, rice husk and quartz sand with specified properties were used as biomass and inert material, respectively. Our model was first validated the feasibility using previous findings, then an extensive parametric study was conducted to determine the effects of the major variables, especially the size of rice husk particles, on the flow distribution and the heat transfer between the phases. The concept of standard deviation attributed to the dispersion of solid volume fraction was used to calculate the intensity of segregation. The simulated results indicated that the mixing of binary mixture was strongly affected by different sizes of rice husk particles. The heat transfer occurring inside the fluidized bed was described by the distribution of solids temperature, the variation of surface heat flux and heat transfer coefficient. Both heat transfer quantities were observed to be dominant in the dense bed regions as they strongly depend on the solids concentration in the fluidized bed. The increasing inlet gas velocity promoted the mixing of solid particles, thus resulted in the effective heat transfer from wall to particles and between the particles.

The hydrodynamics and heat transfer of biomass pyrolysis process in a 2-D fluidized-bed reactor have been investigated by applying CFD technique. An Eulerian MFM coupled with the KTGF was used to study the behaviors of binary mixture of rice husk and sand during the fluidization. Some typical results represented for this study were shown in the graphical abstract.233