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Abstract:The present paper reports the optimization of solid circulation rate (SCR) in Compartmented Fluidized Bed Gasifier (CFBG), an indirectly heated fluidized bed that incorporates two sets of v-valves and risers to control the solid circulation across the two compartments, i.e. combustor and gasifier of a pilot plant scale (the height and ID are 1.8m and 0.66m respectively). Sand was used as inert fluidized by air. Four operating variables were studied i.e. bed height, riser, v-valve and main bed flowrate. Based on 2 4 full factorial design of experiment in Yates' algorithm, at confidence level ≥ 95%, ANOVA analysis has revealed six important effects. The steepest ascent method was applied on linear regression generated from these effects to design the subsequent optimization experiments. The optimum values of SCR have been estimated for both low and high bed level at specific operating parameters.

A flexible protruding surface was employed as the flow disturbance to promote turbulence at the area of interest. An ultrasonic velocity profiler, UVP technique, was used to study the mean and fluctuating flow properties in the near wake of the rigid and flexible protruding surface in a water tunnel. The polymer based, ethylene-vinyl acetate (EVA) with an aspect ratio of AR = 10, 12, 14, 16 was used as the flexible circular cylinder, and submerged in a flow at Re = 4000, 6000 and 8000. The motion of the cylinder altered the fluid flow significantly. As a means to quantify turbulence, the wakes regions and production terms were analyzed. In general, the flexible cylinders show better capability in augmenting the turbulence than the rigid cylinder. The results show that the turbulence production term generated by the flexible cylinder is higher than that of rigid cylinder. The localized maximum shear production values have increased significantly from 131%, 203% and 94% against their rigid counterparts of AR = 16 at the Re = 4000, 6000 and 8000, respectively. The performance of turbulence enhancement depends heavily on the motion of the cylinder. The findings suggest that the turbulence enhancement was due to the oscillation of the flexible cylinder. The results have concluded that the flexible cylinder is a better turbulence generator than the rigid cylinder, thus improving the mixing of fluid through augmented turbulent flow.

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Turbulence is a very useful flow characteristic that is used in many engineering devices to facilitate mixing, heat transfer in heat exchanger and improving aerodynamics in propeller. This paper has numerically studied the spatial characteristics of the wake behind a free-oscillating flexible vortex generator (FVG) in order to evaluate its turbulence generation ability. As the wake is playing as the effective turbulence region, the spatial characteristics can reflect the ability of the FVG in turbulence generation when a larger wake size indicates a greater turbulence region. Two VGs are considered in this study; circular and flat plate cantilever. Each VG was submerged individually in a subcritical flow (102 <ReD < 105) and the generated wake was studied. The wake behind the FVG was visualized via the lambda2 vortex identification criterion and it was compared with its respective rigid counterpart. From the comparison, it is found that the FVG has a larger wake compared to its rigid counterpart. The result demonstrates that the FVG can generate a larger turbulence region. The cause of the increasing wake size was found to be the weakening of downwash behind the FVG when it bends. The downwash becomes weaker as the deflection of the FVG increases.

Impedance pump is a type of valveless pumping device, in which it utilizes a bio-inspired mechanism for pumping of fluid based on resonant wave interactions along a flexible media. By inducing a periodic asymmetrical compression on the flexible media will produce a unidirectional flow within the system. The impedance pump has many beneficial characteristics which make it an effective driving mechanism, especially for micro-fluidic systems. In addition, the wave-based mechanism through which pumping occurs infers many benefits in terms of simplicity of design and manufacturing. Adjustment of simple parameters such as the excitation frequency or compression location will reverse the direction of flow, providing a very versatile range of flow outputs. This paper describes the experimental analysis of such impedance-driven flow with emphasis on dynamical study of the reverse flow in open-loop environment. In this study, tapered section with converging steps is introduced at both ends of the flexible media to amplify the reverse flow. Study conducted shows that the reverse peak flow is rather significant with estimate of 23% lower than the forward peak flow. The flow dynamics on the other hand has shown to exhibit different characteristics as per the forward peak flow.

Compartmented fluidized bed gasifier (CFBG), consisting of two compartments, which are the combustor and gasifier, uses the air blown instead of pure oxygen for syngas production, eliminating the need for the air separation unit and thus reducing the capital cost as distinguished from traditional ones. This paper presents a fluidization quality study on the cold physical model of CFBG for the main bed of the combustor and gasifier without considering the solid circulation inside. Different inert particles (river sand, quartz sand, and alumina) were used to investigate the effects of the distributor free area and the geometry of the compartments (area reduction/expansion) on the fluidization quality in CFBG. The results demonstrate that the combustor compartment can attain good fluidization quality, whereas the gasifier hardly achieves good fluidization because of the occurrence of channeling. The fluidization quality of the gasifier continues to remain poor even after the attempt of changing the distributor design by increasing the distributor free area. Our study shows that the effective diameter, D e, for the compartmented reactor has a pronounced effect on the fluidization quality if the basic criteria, the distributor/operating pressure drop ratio greater than the distributor/critical pressure drop ratio, has been met. On the basis of the values of D e found in our study, the CFBG reactor in our real pilot plant is designed according to the partition ratio of 60:40 (combustor/gasifier), with the total diameter of 0.65 m, so that the minimum effective diameter requirement can be achieved at the gasifier side when compared to the originally proposed ratio of 65:35 (combustor/gasifier) at a total diameter of 0.484 m.