Modeling thermal oxidation of coal mine methane in a non-catalytic reverse-flow reactor

Abstract

Inspired by detailed designs of industrial porous burners, the combustion of methane-air mixtures in a non-catalytic reverse-flow reactor was studied numerically. The governing equations are the unsteady state equations of conservation of mass and chemical species, with separate energy equations for the solid and gas phases. These equations were solved using the commercial CFD code Fluent. In order to reveal the actual thermal oxidation in porous media, the user defined function (UDF) is used to extend the ability of FLUENT. The model has been used to investigate the effects of operating conditions such as the mixture inlet approach velocity (0.15 to 0.8 m/s) and methane concentration (0.3 to 0.7%) on the oxidation of methane within non-catalytic reactors packed with ceramic monolith blocks under adiabatic conditions. The calculated values of methane conversion showed good agreement with the corresponding available experimental data. Moreover temperature distribution characteristics in the oxidation bed were studied in order to maintain the autothermicity of TFRR with a high enough temperature in the hot zone. © 2014 Journal of Mechanical Engineering. All rights reserved.