Heat and mass transfer of reacting porous particles

The purpose of this project is to contribute to the development of a high-fidelity simulation model for the thermochemical conversion of biomass. Particularly, we focus on heat and mass transfer inside reacting fuel particles and their surroundings.

The main aims are to build a better understanding of how (1) different types of chemical reactions affect intra-particle transport phenomena, (2) different pore size distribution affects the transport phenomena, and (3) internal and external transport phenomena interact under various conditions of surrounding flows.

With the new insight, we will also aim to develop simple closure models describing the above effects.The majority of this project will be carried out by a particle-resolve direct numerical simulation (PR-DNS), which has been developed by the applicants in the previous project funded by Swedish Research Council.

For each research question, we will modify the PR-DNS code to describe specific effects, e.g. chemical reactions, pore-size effects, and so on.

The project will be mainly carried out by a new PhD student under the supervision of the applicants with relevant competence.The project will fill the knowledge gap that is important to build a reliable and efficient simulation tool mainly for pulverised biomass combustion and gasification, but also applicable for metal combustion in part.

It has a positive impact on the development of low-carbon technologies, such as biofuel production and thermochemical energy storage.