FLUIDIZED-BED GASIFICATION REACTOR MODELING .1. MODEL DESCRIPTION AND NUMERICAL RESULTS FOR A SINGLE BED

A parametric study of fluidized bed steam oxygen-char gasification reactors is used to identify the relevant design parameters. A simple well mixed reactor, the Davidson and Harrison, and the Kunii and Levenspiel flow schemes are used to formulate the mass and energy conservation equations. The solutions show the effects of hypotheses about chemical kinetics, char reactivity and density evolution, agglomerating combustion, residence time distribution, bubble and cloud-wake size, and flow pattern in the dense phase. The carbon conversion for the range of temperatures considered is found to be far from equilibrium conditions and strongly dependent on the oxygen feed and on the bubble-cloud-wake characteristics, with the other variables playing a less important role. © 1979, American Chemical Society. All rights reserved.