Numerical Simulation of Combustion in Porous Media

Abstract

This paper concerns the combustion in a reactive packed bed of oil shales grains. In order to predict impact of many parameters on fixed bed combustion of Timahdit oil shales (Morocco), a transient one dimensional numerical tool was designed. The possible thermal disequilibrium between solid and gas phase revealed in previous studies has been treated using a two phases heat balance equation, one for the gas and the other for the solid. Chemical analysis coming from series of experiments performed in Rapsodee Lab. (Albi, France) were used to determine a coal model considering pyrolysis producing char which is oxidized using the oxygen conveyed by the air flow. The sensitivity of the model to the speed injection is analyzed in this paper. The development of a 2D numerical tool will be also presented to show the importance of thermal heat lossesexisting on the walls and their consequence on the reactive front propagations.