An Eulerian Approach to Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulation of a Chemical Looping Combustion Reactor With Chemical Reactions

Abstract

Chemicallooping combustion (CLC) is a nextgeneration combustion technology that shows great promise in addressing the need for highefficiency lowcost carbon capture from fossil fueled power plants. Although there have been a number of experimental studies on CLC in recent years, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations have been limited in the literature. In this paper, simulation of a CLC reactor is conducted using the Eulerian approach in the commercial CFD solver ansys fluent based on a laboratoryscale experiment with a dual fluidized bed CLC reactor. The solid phase consists of a Febased oxygen carrier while the gaseous fuel used is syngas. The salient features of the fluidization behavior in the air reactor and fuel reactor beds representing a riser and a bubbling bed, respectively, as well as the downcomer, are accurately captured in the simulation. This work is among the few CFD simulations of a complete circulating dual fluidized bed system for CLC in 3D in the literature. It highlights the importance of 3D simulation of CLC systems and the need for more accurate empirical reaction rate data for future CLC simulations.