Numerical Simulation of a 10 kW Gas-Fueled Chemical Looping Combustion Unit

Abstract

Chemical looping combustion is one novel technology for controlling CO2 emission with a low energy cost. Due to a lack of understanding of the detailed and micro behavior of the CLC process, especially for a three dimensional structure, numerical simulations are carried out in this work. The configuration is built according to the experimental unit and gaseous fuel is used in this work. A two-fluid model considering heterogeneous reactions is established, and the flow behaviour and reaction characteristics are obtained. The temperature in the air reactor increases with height owing to the exothermic reaction of the xidation of the oxygen carrier, while the temperature in the fuel reactor decreases with height due to the endothermic reaction. The oxidation level of the oxygen carrier is obtained by simulation, which is hard for measurement, and the difference between the inlet and outlet is 0.065. The influences of the operating temperature and injection rate of fuel are presented to understand the performance of the system. The highest fuel conversion rate reaches 0.92 under high operating temperature. The numerical results are helpful for acquiring insight on the flow and reactive behaviour of CLC reactors.