Combustion Analysis of Biomass Based Slurry Fuels in Oil Fired Furnace Using CFD-Tool

Abstract

An existing oil fired furnace was modeled to obtain the maximum swirling of biomass based slurry fuel and air to achieve better combustion of the biomass fuel present in the slurry. For analysis a computational model of the furnace was constructed with a swirl burner placed at the bottom of the furnace using commercially available CFD preprocessing software (GAMBIT). The boundary conditions were set so as to allow biomass slurry and air with different swirl angles with respect to horizontal and vertical planes, with constant velocities of the mixtures. This research work focuses on the effect of different inlet angles of the fuel supply at constant velocity into the furnace for maximum combustion efficiency. Using Fluent, the post process results shows the increase in residence time by 40% with inlet angle of 45 deg with respect to the x and z-axis, 75 deg from positive y-axis and top partially opened, compared to the initial position of the swirl burner placed directly at zero deg. Using non-premixed combustion model the combustion efficiency of the fuel was increased.