Performance analysis of a steady flamelet model for the use in small-scale biomass combustion under extreme air-staged conditions

Small-scale biomass boiler development is often based on empirical methods resulting in high efforts for experimental test runs using several prototypes. CFD simulations are able to reduce both, development time and efforts for tests and prototypes, supposing that the models reliability is high and its computational effort is low. Extreme air-staging with an initial gasification stage and a subsequent fuel gas burnout in a downstream gas-burner is a promising new method to reduce NOX and PM emissions in small-scale biomass boilers. Gasification conditions in the first combustion stage lead to high accumulation of gaseous tars in the fuel gas contributing challenges for combustion simulation because common CFD models use 2 or 3-step global methane reaction schemes to describe combustion chemistry. In this work, the performance of a computationally inexpensive steady flamelet model (SFM) together with a detailed reaction mechanism (18 species, 42 reactions) was scrutinized. In order to evaluate the performance of the SFM, two furnace designs were examined, running under different load shifts and various excess air ratio. Comparative numerical simulations were performed with classical species transport models. The numerical simulations and the experiments for validation were carried out on a wood-chip boiler with a heat output of 40 kW. Results show that flue gas temperature, flame shape, main flue gas concentrations and NOX can be quantitatively predicted. The SFM shows also reasonable good predictions for CO variation trends. With the present approach, calculation time can be reduced by 90% compared to commonly used models (EDC). The SFM provides sufficiently accurate results within 24 h using a standard processor consisting of six cores (mesh size 1.5 million elements). Thus, the presented model is a perfectly suitable method for applied science and industrial research.