Numerical Analysis on Wood Pyrolysis in Pre-Vacuum Chamber

Abstract

In the previous experimental work, a new technology system for wood pyrolysis was developed to aim at mitigating climate change, global warming, and energy crisis as well as enhancing low elec-trification in rural areas in developing countries. The new technology system equipped with a pre-vacuum chamber requires low cost and less maintenance. However, large wood pyrolysis in the pre-vacuum chamber is rather complicated. To obtain a good understanding of the previous experimental results, a numerical analysis taking account of heat-mass transfer and chemical reaction is carried out. Two-step general reaction model is proposed for the numerical analysis. The first stage is volatile and char formation from the wood pieces and the second state is decomposition of the volatile to five species including vapor of tar. In this analysis, chemical formulae of the volatile and the tar are successfully identified hypothetically. The results obtained by this numerical analysis can explain the experimental results reasonably and provide useful information about time evolution of volatile formation, temperature change in pre-vacuum chamber with time, and species mole concentration decomposed from the volatile.