Optimization of the combustion of biomass in a commercial furnace - CFD 3D simulation

生物质燃烧是一项不断增长的业务，它被用来产生热量和电力。这是一项非常有吸引力的技术，因为与石油和天然气燃料相比，它提供的能源价格更低，而且向大气中排放的污染物更少。顾名思义，燃烧系统使用森林和农业残渣等可再生燃料。总部设在温尼伯的加拿大公司Biovalco Inc.正在逐步增加其在这一能源市场的份额。Biovalco的最终目标是优化其系统的设计，以提高其效率，同时改善其燃烧各种固体燃料/原料的能力。到目前为止，Biovalco公司开发的生物质燃烧系统已经成功地燃烧了许多原料，如木屑、木球和农业残渣(稻草、亚麻屑)，其链条炉排设计已经成功地燃烧了一些原料。然而，为了使燃烧系统的设计达到最大限度的最佳性能，仍有几个挑战需要克服。例如，含水率较高的木材燃烧效率不如含水率较低的木材，而大麦秸秆由于其化学性质，会比小麦秸秆产生更多的熟料。生物质燃烧最成功的关键一直取决于原料的稠度。在选择原料时，必须考虑所有这些因素。此外，使用不当的材料或错误的混合气也会对燃烧效率产生不利影响。 因此，目前的研究方案旨在了解Biovalco系统的燃烧过程，最终目标是提出一种优化设计，在用户需要根据可获得性和价格从材料转换到另一种材料的情况下，还可以处理不一致的原料。因此，这些以农业残渣为基础的燃料系统的进一步开发将使清洁和高效的绿色能源生产成为加拿大农业的主要收入来源。这将通过出售农作物残渣作为燃料来增加农民的收入，而不是在田里焚烧。

Biomass combustion, which is a growing business, is used to generate heat and power. It is a very attractive technology because it provides energy at cheaper price compared to oil and gas fuels and also emits fewer pollutants into the atmosphere. As the name implies, the combustion system is fired using renewable fuels such as forest and agriculture residues. Biovalco Inc., which is a Canadian company headquartered in Winnipeg, is gradually increasing its share in this energy market. The ultimate goal of Biovalco is to optimize the design of their system in order to increase its efficiency while improving its capability to combust a variety of solid fuels/feedstock. To date, the biomass combustion system developed by Biovalco Inc. has been successful in combusting a number of feedstock such as woodchips, wood pellets and agricultural residues (straw, flax shives) with its chain grate stoker design. However, there are still several challenges to overcome in order to bring the design of the combustion system to its maximum best performance. For example, wood with higher moisture content will not burn as efficiently as wood with lower moisture content, and barley straw will cause more clinker formations than wheat straw because of its chemical properties. The key to the most successful biomass combustion has always relied on the consistency of the feedstock. All of these factors have to be considered when selecting feedstock. In addition, using improper materials or wrong mixture will have detrimental impact on the efficiency of the combustion. Therefore, the present research proposal aims at understanding the combustion process of Biovalco's system with the ultimate goal to come up with an optimum design that can also handle inconsistent feedstock in the event that the user needs to switch from material to another depending on the availability and price. Hence, further development of these systems for agricultural residue-based fuels will unleash a major source of revenue for Canadian agricultural industry by allowing clean and efficient green energy production. This will increase revenues for farmers by selling agricultural crop residues for fuel instead of burning them in the fields.