Simulating the behavior of a wire mesh reactor for olive kernel fast pyrolysis

The simulation of the behavior of a wire mesh reactor is presented in the following study making use of models extracted from the literature. Two different kinetic models are used, coupled with heat transfer model, mass conservation equations, continuity equations and momentum equations. The numerical method applied is finite difference for the momentum, mass conservation, heat transfer and continuity equations and Runge-Kutta fourth order for the chemical kinetic model equations. Simulations are carried out for spherical olive kernel particles with radius of 175 mu m, reactor temperature 873 K and heating rates of 200 K/s. The simulation works satisfyingly under the hypothesis of ablative behavior and the results are in very good agreement with the experimental data regarding temperature, conversion histories and product distribution of olive kernel fast pyrolysis. (C) 2007 Published by Elsevier B.V.