Modelling of combustion characteristics of high ash coal char particles at high pressure: Shrinking reactive core model

Combustion of a single-particle high ash coal char at elevated pressure has been analyzed. A fully transient shrinking reactive core model incorporating a simple mechanistic kinetic scheme is used to study the combustion characteristics of high ash coal char. The model includes heat and mass transfer phenomena, reaction kinetics and intra-particle details. Finite volume method (FVM) has been used to solve partial differential equations representing fully transient conservation equations. The char combustion model predicts the mass-loss profile and burnout time of the char particle at different temperature and oxygen concentration. The computed results are found to agree well with the published experimental findings of pressurized combustion of high ash coal char. The effects of bulk temperature, total pressure and initial particle size on combustion characteristic and burnout time have been examined through model simulation. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.