Up to date, limited literature is found on pressure drop prediction of beds with cylindrical pellets and none was found for gasifying beds with cylindrical pellets.. In this paper, an av
Trang 1Pressure drop prediction of a gasifier bed with cylindrical biomass
pellets
Royal Institute of Technology, Department of Material Science and Engineering, Division of Energy and Furnace Technology, Brinellvägen 23, 100-44 Stockholm, Sweden
h i g h l i g h t s
An equation was developed for pressure drop prediction with shrinking effect
Graphical representations of correlation constants were introduced
This would provide a guide to select pellet size and designing a grate
a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history:
Received 6 March 2013
Received in revised form 26 June 2013
Accepted 13 July 2013
Available online 8 August 2013
Keywords:
Biomass
Gasification
Fixed bed
Pressure drop
a b s t r a c t
Bed pressure drop is an import parameter related to operation and performance of fixed bed gasifiers Up
to date, limited literature is found on pressure drop prediction of beds with cylindrical pellets and none was found for gasifying beds with cylindrical pellets
In this paper, an available pressure drop prediction correlation for turbulent flows in a bed with cylin-drical pellets which has used equivalent tortuous passage method was extended for a gasifier bed with shrinking cylindrical pellets and for any flow condition Further, simplified graphical representations introduced based on the developed correlation can be effectively used as a guide for selecting a suitable pellet size and designing a grate so that it can be met the system requirements
Results show that the method formulated in the present study gives pressure drop approximation within 7% deviation compared to measured values with respect to performed runs Available empirical correlation with modified Ergun constants for cylindrical pellets gave pressure drop within 20% deviation after the effect of shrinkage was taken into account
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved
1 Introduction
Biomass gasification is a promising renewable energy
technol-ogy for supplying thermal energy and generating electric power
Nowadays, pelletized biomass is widely used in order to overcome
some problems when using conventional biomass in thermal
applications like gasification including logistic problems due to
low bulk density, non-uniformity of fuel, low energy density, etc
Pressure drop is an important factor in fixed bed gasification of
Biomass Most common and widely used method for predicting
pressure drop in a packed bed is using Ergun equation which has
viscous and inertial terms corresponding to laminar and turbulent
flow conditions One limitation of this model when applying for a
gasifier bed with biomass pellets is due to the particle shape which
is essentially cylindrical shape when considering pellets Limited
literature is available in pressure drop prediction for a bed with
cylindrical pellets
One research group[1]has considered this effect and has devel-oped an equation for pressure drop in packed bed with cylindrical shaped particles by using equivalent tortuous passage method But, the equation is limited to turbulent flow conditions and not valid for a bed with laminar or transition flow conditions
Some investigators[2]have developed an empirical correlation for Ergun constants for a bed of cylindrical particles by referring the sphericity of particles But, this correlation does not show strong validity due to scatter of data and suitable only for a rough approximation of the pressure drop Lack of theoretical back-ground is another limitation for applying this correlation Further considering these models, none of the above models for cylindrical particles are developed for active beds of particles In a gasifier, particles participate in the reaction and therefore particle size and the porosity of bed varies with time and along the height
of the bed Even if steady state condition is considered, the spacial variation of porosity has to be taken into account
Some researchers[3]have addressed this issue on a downdraft gasifier but with particles in spherical shape and hence Ergun equa-tion and its’ another variaequa-tion called Macdonald correlaequa-tion have
0306-2619/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd All rights reserved.
⇑Corresponding author Tel.: +46 8 790 8402; fax: +46 8 207 681.
E-mail address: rmdsgu@kth.se (D.S Gunarathne).
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Applied Energy
j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w e l s e v i e r c o m / l o c a t e / a p e n e r g y
Trang 2been used along with considering the wall effects Another group[4]
has focused on cylindrical wood particle in a fluidized bed
consider-ing shrinkconsider-ing effect but only pyrolysis conditions An interestconsider-ing
lit-erature [5] was found for a coal gasifier and they have found
pressure drop variations within different zones in the gasifier by
using Ergun equation for each zone separately This method has
incorporated lots of experimental data and may be successfully
used for that specific commercial gasifier model but not for any type
of gasifier Therefore, none of the above cases can be used for
pre-dicting pressure drop in any fixed bed gasifiers of cylindrical pellets
One of our previous works [6] concentrated on developing a
model for prediction of pressure drop due to grate-bed resistance
of a gasifier As the second step of that, with the objective of filling
the gap on pressure drop prediction of gasifier beds with
cylindri-cal pellets, here we focus on the bed resistance Considering
limi-tations of previous models, an equation is developed based on
the model predicted in the literature[1] including the effect of
laminar and transition flow conditions and also the effect of
shrinkage of particles during gasification and will be verified based
on experimental data Further, it will also compare with the
empir-ical correlation available for cylindrempir-ical pellets[2]which will also
be upgraded by taking shrinking effect into account
2 Materials and methods
2.1 Materials
The biomass pellets used in the experiment (Fig 1) were
sup-plied by Boson Energy S.A
The length distribution of pellets considering 50 numbers of
pellets is given inFig 2
It can be seen that the majority of pellets are in the range of 11–
15 mm in length Physical properties of pellets (before the
experi-ment) can be summarized as inTable 1
Pellet proximate and ultimate analysis along with the heating
value is given inTable 2
2.2 Gasification system
Gasification experiments were carried out in updraft High
Tem-perature Agent Gasifier (HTAG) unit with 0.4 m diameter (Fig 3)
This unit is incorporated with feed gas preheater, updraft gasifier, fuel feeding system and producer gas post combustion unit De-tailed description of this experimental facility is available else-where[7]
Biomass pellets stored in the feed tank is transported to the gas-ifier via screw conveyor The frequency of feeder is correlated with the feeding rate Required frequency set point is predetermined in order to achieve specific biomass feed rate
Preheated air from the preheater is introduced to the gasifier at the side of bottom section below the grate The system has the facility to add steam to the feed stream if required The flow of hot gases and biomass is countercurrent The grate facilitates to build up a fixed bed of biomass and small particles left after con-siderable reaction can pass through the grate and collected below The producer gas which is flown upwards, leave the gasifier at the side of the top section and is burned out at the combustion chamber
2.3 Experimental procedure and data reduction The feeder was pre-calibrated with biomass pellets used in the experiment Once the air temperature was reached around 1000 °C
Nomenclature
A modified Ergun constant for viscous term (–)
B modified Ergun constant for inertial term (–)
c length of cylindrical particle at any time (m)
c0 initial length of cylindrical particle (m)
De equivalent diameter of tortuous passage (m)
d diameter of cylindrical particle at any time (m)
d0 initial diameter of cylindrical particle (m)
dp equivalent particle diameter (m)
K1 constant depend on c0,d0and x (for inertial term) (–)
K2 constant depend on c0,d0and x (for viscous term) (–)
K3 constant depend on c0,d0and x (for Rep) (–)
Kt constant depend on roughness of particle and packing
tortuosity (–)
L length (height) of the bed (m)
LHV lower heating value of biomass (MJ/kg)
l equivalent length of tortuous passage (m)
mbiomass mass of single biomass particle (kg)
mchar mass of single char particle (kg)
Rep particle Reynolds number (–)
rH hydraulic radius (m)
Sp particle surface area (m2)
Vp particle volume (m3)
v velocity of flow through tortuous passage (m/s)
Greek letters
k angle of inclination of tortuous passage to the mean
flow (°)
l viscosity (Ns/m2)
Trang 3by using preheater, desired feed rate was achieved by adjusting
frequency of feeder
Temperatures inside the gasifier were measured with type S
thermocouples located along the reactor height and recorded by
data acquisition system connected to a PC Pressure inside the gasifier below the grate and three more points above the grate were measured with digital manometers so that bed pressure drop can be calculated It was assumed that the horizontal gradient of temperature and pressure is not significant
Syngas composition was measured with Gas chromatography (GC) Tar samples were collected from the gas outlet pipe and ana-lyzed later for quantity and composition
For each run, 20 min time interval was selected for analysis This time interval was selected based on stable temperatures and gas compositions Average values of gas compositions and temper-atures within this time interval were taken for analysis
From ultimate analysis of fuel, the average chemical formula of pellets was obtained as CH1.43O0.65and it was used to calculate the stoichiometric air to fuel ratio for calculating Equivalence Ratio (ER)
Gas flow rate was calculated by applying Nitrogen balance over the gasifier
The average gas properties such as density and viscosity within the gasifier bed were calculated by taking volume average with gas composition data at average bed temperature
3 Results and discussion 3.1 Process performance
Table 3gives experimental data andFigs 4–6show variation of temperature along the gasifier height, gas compositions and char-acteristic ratios respectively.Table 4gives the tar composition and tar characteristic ratios of each run
From temperature data, we see different bed temperature behaviours with two cases Run 1 with low ER shows gradual tem-perature drop throughout the bed height and run 2 with high ER shows high temperature adjacent to the grate with sudden drop after that Then it can be expected with run 2, CO2and H2O gener-ated by exothermic combustion reactions at high temperature zone near the grate has reduced to CO and H2by endothermic bou-douard and water gas reactions at the subsequent low temperature region As a result, high CO and H2content can be seen with run 2 They were respectively 4% and 5% increment compared to run 1
In overall, low temperature was seen throughout the gasifier with low ER in run 1 and comparatively high hydrocarbon and also tar content was observed compared to run 2 due to cracking reac-tions Even with low CO and H2contents, as a result of high CH4
and CxHycontents which were around 11% and 140% higher than run 2, LHV is slightly higher with run 1 However, high CO and
H2content with run 2 resulted in high gas yield and hence consid-erably higher efficiency
Fig 2 Length distribution of pellets.
Table 1
Physical properties of pellets.
Particle density (g/cm 3
Diameter of equivalent spherical particle (mm) – d p 11
Table 2
Composition of pellets.
Ultimate analysis
Trang 4When characteristic ratios are considered, CO/CO2 ratio was
higher with run 2 CH4/H2and CxHy/CH4ratios were higher with
run 1 CH4/H2and CxHy/CH4ratios show the effectiveness of
hydro-carbon cracking and cracking shows more effective in run 2 due to
high temperature and longer bed There was no significant differ-ence seen with H2/CO ratio of two cases
Significant reduction of almost all the tar components was seen with run 2 Tar characteristic ratios were also reduced and it repre-sents that high temperature and longer bed has a positive impact
on tar decomposition reactions
Referring toTable 5, it was observed a considerable bed height achieved with each run When bed height is higher, residence time for both solid and gas phase reactions are larger and it is reflected
by high CO and H2content, gas yield and gasification efficiency ob-tained with run 2 Specially, significant reduction of tar content is also positive
However, the drawback of such large bed is large pressure drop
of the system which ultimately affects the system performance Therefore, prediction of pressure drop of a gasifier bed is a quite interesting topic for anyone concerning the system performance 3.2 Prediction of pressure drop
3.2.1 Developing the correlation Total pressure drop through a gasifier bed is mainly a sum of pressure drop through the particle bed and pressure drop through the grate However, in this study, grate resistance can be consid-ered as negligible since grate opening area is high as much as 40% and the grate thickness is low which is 6 mm
Literature[1]has derived Eq.(1)based on equivalent tortuous passage method for pressure dropDP over a bed height of L in a turbulent flow using Blasius smooth pipe equation for a packed bed with cylindrical particles of diameter d and length c,
Table 3
Experimental data.
Run Dry
biomass
(kg/h)
Feed gas a
(N m 3
/h)
(MJ/
N m 3 )
Gas yield (N m 3
/kg dry biomass)
Efficiency (%)
a
Feed gas contains 17% O 2 , 81% N 2 and 2% CO 2
Fig 4 Temperature profile along the gasifier height.
Fig 5 Gas compositions.
Fig 6 Gas characteristic ratios.
Table 4 Tar composition data.
Total (g/N m 3
Characteristic ratios
Table 5 Bed heights and pressure drop.
Run Bed height (m) Pressure drop across the bed (Pa)
Trang 5DP ¼ LKtqu2ð1 eÞ5=4
e3
1 2cþ
1 d
5=4
l
qu
1=4
ð1Þ
Ktis a constant combining roughness of the particles and packing
tortuosity all together and has determined experimentally and
re-lated to porosityeas follows
Kt¼ 112e3:2
Since they have considered only the inertial term of pressure
drop, it can be modified to fit to laminar or transitional flows also
by adding a viscous term
Hagen–Poiseuille equation for pressure drop in laminar flow is,
DP ¼32l vl
D2e
Fixing to the definitions in[1]which are tabulated inTable 6
assuming equivalent inclined passage with an angle k to the
direc-tion of mean flow, Hagen–Poiseuille equadirec-tion can be re-arranged
as,
DP ¼ 32luLð1 eÞ2
e3
1 2cþ
1 d
ð2Þ
Then, by combining Eqs.(1) and (2) and rearranging, Rangel
equation can be modified for any flow condition as,
DP
L
1
qu2
¼ K1
Re1=4
p
þK2
Rep
ð3Þ
where Rep¼ð
q u
l Þ
K3
K1¼ 112e0:2ð1 eÞ 1
2cþ
1 d
K2¼ 32ð1 eÞ
e3
1
2cþ
1 d
K3¼ ð1 eÞ 1
2cþ
1 d
Graphical representations of above correlation constants for
typical biomass pellet sizes available in the market are annexed
3.2.1.1 Relation of porosity and sphericity in a bed of cylindrical
particles Some researchers[8]have formulated a relationship
be-tween porosity and sphericityUfor loose random packing of
cylin-drical particles as given in Eq.(4) This correlation shows very good
agreement with their experimental data
lne¼U5:58exp½5:89ð1 UÞ ln 0:4 ð4Þ
The sphericity of a cylindrical particle depends on its length
Very long or very short particles give low sphericity The sphericity
of cylindrical particle is given by,
U¼ð36pV2
Þ1=3
Sp
where Vpand Spare cylinder volume and area respectively
Substituting for volume and area,
U¼ 2:25 ð
cÞ2 0:5 þ c 3
" #1=3
ð5Þ
Then, porosityeof a bed with cylindrical particles is obtained as
a function of particle size c and d
3.2.1.2 Shrinking effect of particles Due to the reaction happening
in the gasifier bed, the particle size is changing along the bed This results in change of sphericity and consequently the porosity of the bed Wall effect and thickness effects on porosity variation can be neglected for the cases with tube to particle diameter ratio D/dp
and bed height to particle diameter ratio L/dpare high According
to[9]the values should be D/dpP10 and L/dp> 3 in order to ne-glect those effects This assumption was applied here assuming the gasification is done in a pilot scale unit with considerable diameter compared to particle size and achieving considerable height of bed which only necessitates pressure drop prediction Particle size of a reacting bed can be calculated by applying mass balance for one particle and mass of char particle mcharand mass of initial biomass particle mbiomasscan be related as,
mchar¼ ð1 xÞmbiomass
Practically two types of size reductions can be expected in a gasifier; fragmentation and conversion Fragmentation can be ta-ken as less important when it comes to wood pellets compared
to wood chips gasification due to high density of pellets [10] Therefore, surface conversion was assumed to dominate in this case With surface conversion, density of biomass particle can be taken as constant throughout the conversion period Then, volume
of char particle and volume of initial biomass particle can be re-lated same as above
If initial length and diameter was considered as c0 and d0 it becomes,
For a cylindrical wood pellet, assuming uniform thickness h is reduced for a certain time period from all its dimensions[11], after
a certain time new length c and diameter d of particle is given by,
c = c0 2h and d = d0 2h Avoiding unknown h,
Knowing c0, d0and x,ccan be obtained from Eqs.(6) and (7)and used in Eq.(5), in order to calculate sphericity And then, sphericity can be used in Eq.(4)for calculating porosity These values along with flow properties such as velocity, density and viscosity can
be used in Eq.(3)in order to calculate pressure drop along the gas-ifier bed for a known conversion and bed height
3.2.2 Calculation of pressure drop Conversion x at the top of the bed is 0 and at the bottom x is as-sumed to be 1 The average mass conversion within the bed can be calculated based on the C, H and O molar balanceTable 7 summa-rizes the molar inputs, outputs and also accumulated in char From molar rates of each species accumulated in char which is equal to difference in input and output, hourly char generation can
be calculated and it is 12.78 kg/h and 12.68 kg/h respectively in two cases Then, average mass conversion x in the bed is 0.79 and 0.75 respectively
With conversion values calculated, referring to Section3.2.1, c,
d,Uandecan be calculated and given inTable 8 The particle diameter and average length has reduced respec-tively from 8 mm and 14 mm initial values to around 4.5 mm and 10 mm at the average conversion With reduced particle sizes
Table 6
Defining parameters in tortuous passage.
Parameter related to tortuous passage Definition fixing to [1]
e cos k
cos k
a cos k
V p ð1 eÞ
Trang 6it can be expect that low porosity since small sized particles pack
more tightly than large size ones Proving this, the initial porosity
0.445 has reduced up to 0.42 at achieved conversion
With conversion, pellets get small and porosity is reduced
Therefore, porosity at the top of the reacting bed is highest and it
is lowest at the bottom
Density, viscosity and superficial velocity of gas flow inside the
bed can be approximated by bed temperature, gas flow rate and
gas compositions Then, these values along with c, d andecan be used as inputs to the Eq.(3).Table 9represents all the parameters and calculated bed pressure drop for both runs
3.2.3 Incorporating shrinking effect into available empirical correlation for comparison
For cylindrical particles some researchers[2]have obtained a relationship with the sphericity and Ergun constants A and B as gi-ven in the following equation:
DP ¼ L Að1 eÞ2l
e3U2d2p u þ B
ð1 eÞq
e3Udp
u2
ð8Þ
where A ¼150
U 3=2and B ¼1:75
U 4=3
By incorporating shrinking effect this equation can be improved for a reacting bed To do this, sphericity and modified Ergun con-stants were calculated for each initial length interval and their average values are given inTable 10
The modified constants calculated for two cases are as follows For Run 1,
DP ¼ L 204ð1 eÞ2l
e3U2d2p u þ 2:3
ð1 eÞq
e3Udp
u2
For Run 2,
DP ¼ L 202ð1 eÞ2l
e3U2d2p u þ 2:28
ð1 eÞq
e3Udp
u2
Ergun indices obtained are 35% and 31% increased respectively compared to original Ergun constants which are 150 and 1.75 for viscous and inertial terms respectively When bed is composed of cylindrical particles, the pressure drop is higher compared to pack-ing spherical particles The orientation of particles, tortuosity and wetted surface are blamed regarding this increase[2]
3.2.4 Validation with experimental data Pressure drop results calculated with developed correlation and empirical correlation can be compared with experimental data as given inFig 7
The method formulated in the present study gives better approximation with only 7% maximum error with respect to per-formed two runs The available empirical equation was able to pre-dict the pressure drop within 20% interval after shrinking effect was taken into account
Table 7
C, H, O molar balance.
Run Description C (kmol/h) H (kmol/h) O (kmol/h)
1 Input (biomass & feed gas) 2.29 3.85 2.93
2 Input (biomass & feed gas) 1.92 3.21 2.64
Table 8
Pellet properties after conversion.
Initial length
range (mm)
1–5 1.09 6.09 0.613 0.558 1.23 6.23 0.637 0.534
6–10 4.76 4.76 0.874 0.404 5.04 5.04 0.874 0.404
11–15 9.33 4.33 0.823 0.416 9.65 4.65 0.828 0.415
16–20 14.14 4.14 0.759 0.443 14.46 4.46 0.767 0.439
21–25 19.03 4.03 0.706 0.476 19.36 4.36 0.717 0.469
26–30 23.96 3.96 0.664 0.509 24.29 4.29 0.676 0.499
Weighted
average
9.7 4.4 0.817 0.421 10 4.7 0.822 0.419
Table 9
Summary of parameters for bed pressure drop calculation.
4.02⁄10 5
Table 10
Summary of calculating modified Ergun constants A and B.
Initial length
range (mm)
Average sphericity
sphericity
Weighted average 0.817 204 2.30 0.822 202 2.28
Trang 7Fig A1 Variation of K 1 with conversion for pellets of 8 mm diameter.
Fig A2 Variation of K 2 with conversion for pellets of 8 mm diameter.
Fig A3 Variation of K 3 with conversion for pellets of 8 mm diameter.
Trang 8Fig A4 Variation of K 1 with conversion for pellets of 6 mm diameter.
Fig A5 Variation of K 2 with conversion for pellets of 6 mm diameter.
Fig A6 Variation of K 3 with conversion for pellets of 6 mm diameter.
Trang 94 Conclusions
A correlation for pressure drop prediction in a gasifier bed with
cylindrical particles was proposed, compared with available
empir-ical correlation for cylindrempir-ical pellets and verified with
experimen-tal data
Based on the developed correlation, simplified graphical
repre-sentations were introduced for commonly available pellet sizes in
order to reduce the calculation effort The plots developed can be
effectively used as a guide for selecting suitable pellet size and
designing a grate so that it can be met the system requirements
Acknowledgements
Authors like to acknowledge KIC-innoenergy project which
pro-vided the financial support and Boson Energy S.A which propro-vided
the biomass samples for experimental work
One of authors, Duleeka Sandamali Gunarathne would like to
acknowledge the financial supporting from the European
Commis-sion This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the
Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be
made of the information contained therein
Appendix A Graphical representation of correlation constants
It was reported that pellet size has the more impact on the
shrinking behavior, not the composition of pellet[12,13]
Commer-cially available pellets are commonly found with 6 mm and 8 mm
in diameter with maximum length to diameter ratio being 5[14]
Then, for those pellets, following figures can be used to find the
K values to be used in the Eq.(3)at any conversion if the initial
par-ticle size distribution is known
According toFigs A1–A6, very rapid increase of K values and
hence the pressure drop can be seen at the end of the conversion
period which is happening in the bottom of the bed By having a
grate opening area large enough to maintain conversion below
0.9 may be beneficial in this case depending on the ability of the
system to overcome the pressure drop Therefore, someone can
use these figures as a guide for designing a suitable grate for the system On the other hand, smaller the pellet size, larger the pres-sure drop in the system and it is also clearly seen in these figures With lower length to diameter ratio and small diameter, all the K values and hence the pressure drop will be high Therefore, this can be another guide for selecting a suitable pellet size for the sys-tem requirements
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