Description of a comprehensive mathematical model: Towards a comprehensive biomass particle gasification model

Biomass gasification is still a promising technology after over 30 years’ research and development and has success only in a few niche markets. In this paper, a comprehensive mathematical model for biomass particle gasification is developed within a generic particle framework, assuming the feed is a woody biomass pellet. The particle is discretized into a number of cells along radical direction, on each of which the gas governing equations are numerically solved by using the finite volume method (FVM). FVM is used to solve transport equations of each process. All the key processes, e.g., moisture evaporation, pyrolysis, heterogeneous char reactions, intra-particle heat and mass transfer, and changes in thermos-physical properties and so on, are properly taken into account to update the densities of various solid/liquid components in each cell as well as to provide source terms to the relevant gas-phase governing equations. For the source term, different chemical reactions are assumed, the density, the species, the velocity, the temperature changes, the size of pellet, et al. will be studied and calculated in the end of the project.