Kinetic Modeling of the Gasification of Utah Bituminous Coal and Waste Wood Using Aspen Plus

摘要

This study seeks to develop a kinetic-based ASPEN Plus model for the Brigham Young University (BYU)gasifier, an atmospheric oxygen-blown entrained flow gasifier. The model consists of 11 components, 3 in-builtFORTRAN calculations and a FORTRAN subroutine. The in-built FORTRAN calculations were used for theestimation of the drying process, the separation of char into constituents and the estimation of the gasifier residencetime while the FORTRAN subroutine was used to determine the char gasification kinetics based on the unreactedshrinking core model of Wen and Chaung [1]. The model takes into account the passive heating through moisturerelease, pyrolysis, volatile combustion and char gasification. The model has been validated with the experimentalwork of Brown et al. [2] with Utah bituminous coal, which was used as a baseline for the analysis of wood waste. Inaddition, the effect of operating parameters had been studied to determine the influence of fuel type and gasifierdiameter on the process metrics like the gasification efficiency, species distribution along the centerline etc. Basedon the available knowledge, this is the first detailed non-empirical ASPEN Plus kinetic model for entrained flowgasification (EFG) studies in the oxygen-blown atmospheric Brigham Young University laboratory gasifier set-up.