(132d) Performance Optimization and Emission Reduction of a Baled Biomass Combustor

The use of biomass for combustion processes is of increasing interest for the production of heat and power. The development of appropriate designs of such combustion systems for these fuels is rather challenging, often time-consuming, and cost intensive due to the heterogeneous composition and disadvantageous ash melting behaviour of biomass. The application of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) offers the possibility to reduce development costs and the time-to-market of the combustion process and its apparatuses and machinery. The development of an innovative system based on an adiabatic combustion chamber with three distinct zones - primary firing zone, post combustion zone, and grate furnace - will be presented. A new model for the formation of volatile and NOx precursors within the biomass bale has been implemented into the CFD package FLUENT. Simulation result will be compared with experiments