Hydrodynamic Study of a Circulating Fluidized Bed at High Temperatures: Application to Biomass Gasification

Experimental data on the hydrodynamic behavior of dense and circulating fluidized beds at high temperatures are scarce in the literature. This work deals with the hydrodynamic study of a Fast Internally Circulating Fluidized Bed (FICFB) used for biomass gasification. The first part of this study investigates the influence of the bed temperature (between 20 and 950 degrees C) and the nature of fluidizing gas (air or steam) on the hydrodynamic parameters of a dense fluidized bed of olivine particles (i.e. minimum fluidization velocity and voidage as well as average voidage). Three olivine batches are used with a mean Sauter diameter of 282, 464 and 689 mu m, respectively. Experimental results are compared with different empirical correlations from the literature to evaluate their validity under elevated temperature conditions. Besides, two dimensionless correlations calculating the minimum fluidization velocity and average bed voidage are proposed. The second part of this study focuses on the hydrodynamic behavior of an FICFB operating between 20 and 850 degrees C. The effect of different process parameters (i.e. bed material nature, air velocity, solids inventory, bed temperature) on the solids circulation flow rate is investigated. It was found that the transport velocity U-tr is not affected by the bed temperature and the bed material inventory. It mainly depends on the terminal settling velocity U-t of bed material particles. Besides, key parameters controlling solids flow rate are the combustor gas velocity and the solids inventory. An increase in these parameters leads to a higher circulation flow rate.