Experiment and numerical studies of the effect of equivalent ratio on combustion characteristics in fluidized bed gasifier.

The effect of equivalent ratio on fluidized bed gasifier on using kernel mixed palm cake as feedstock was studied experimentally and numerically. A 3-D numerical model of the reactor, similar to the experimental setup, was created using the commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software ANSYS (Fluent). The fuel feed rate was fixed at 3 kg/hour and the mass flow rate of the air was varied, setting it to equivalent ratios (ER) of 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, and 0.7. The axial temperature profile in the reactor was compared between experimental measurements and numerical simulations and a good agreement was found. Carbon monoxide and volatiles increased when the equivalent ratio decreased, according to the simulations. It was found that ER = 0.1 and ER = 0.3 are suitable equivalent ratios, although the former would not give continuous combustion due to too low reactor temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]