Advances in Modeling Coal Pyrolysis, Char Combustion, and Soot Formation from Coal and Biomass Tar

Simulations of pulverized coal boilers and gasifiers have become easier and more complex as computational resources become more available. The improvements in simulations have generally focused on the fluid dynamics and grid resolution, with marginal improvements in treatments of the fundamental coal reactions. In this work, suggestions are made in several areas to improve boiler and gasifier simulations with only relatively small impacts on computational time. New correlations are presented for the elemental composition of coal char and tar as a function of parent coal characteristics, temperature, and heating rate. The importance and correlation of char oxidation effects are discussed. A new generalized model for soot formation, oxidation, and gasification is also discussed.