Fuel conversion modelling

Research overview >

Chemical interaction of closely located reactive particles in gas flow

The overall aim of this study is to contribute to the development of a new technique to reduce soot formation in entrained flow gasification process through the development of a high performance computer simulation tool. The starting point for the development is an assumption that chemical interactions among fuel particle are responsible for soot reduction. However, it is hard to prove experimentally because of the lack of high resolution in-situ measurement techniques.

This project aims at elucidating chemical interaction of fuel particles with highly resolved numerical simulation in order to reveal why forced particle dispersion can reduce soot formation. Since no existing numerical platform is suitable for this aim, the project will focus on constructing a numerical platform of closely located reactive particles in gas flow. To make the project successful, computational load should be kept manageable while resolving microscale physical phenomena and having representative kinetic scheme. Major tasks of the project are:

1) establishment of highly resolved simulation platform of reactive particles in gas flow;

2) reduction of detailed kinetic schemes for soot formation in biomass flame; and 

3) application of reduced kinetic scheme into particle simulation platform.

This research area has been mainly supported by Swedish Research Council, and in a small part by Swedish Energy Agency.

Some results

Under construction

Publications

• Thamali R. Jayawickrama, Nils Erland L. Haugen, Kentaro Umeki, On the inaccuracies of point-particle approach for char conversion modeling, Fuel 370 (2024) 131743. [link to the article (open access)] 

• Zahra Ghasemi Monfared, J. Gunnar I. Hellström, Kentaro Umeki, The Impact of Discrete Element Method Parameters on Realistic Representation of Spherical Particles in a Packed Bed, Processes 12 (2024)183. [link to the article (open access)] 

• Thamali R. Jayawickrama, M. A. Chishty, Nils Erland L. Haugen, Matthaus U. Babler, Kentaro Umeki, The effects of Stefan flow on the flow surrounding two closely spaced particles, International Journal of Multiphase Flow 166 (2023) 104499. [link to the article (open access)] 

• Thobias Kreitzberg, Aekjuthon Phounglamcheik, Nils Erland L. Haugen, Reinhold Kneer, Kentaro Umeki, A short cut method to predict particle size changes during char combustion and gasificaiton under regime II conditions, Combustion Science and Technology, 194 (2022) 272-291. [link to the article] [link to the authors' version (open access)] 

• Ángel David Garcia Llamas, Ning Guo, Tian Li, Rikard Gebart, Kentaro Umeki, Rapid change of particle velocity due to volatile gas release during biomass devolatilization, Combustion and Flame 238 (2022) 111898 [link to the article (open access)]. 

• Aekjuthon Phounglamcheik, Markus Bäckbo, Ryan Robinson, Kentaro Umeki, The significance of intraparticle and interparticle diffusion during CO2 gasification of biomass char in a packed bed, Fuel 310 (2022) 122302 [link to the article (open access)]. 

• Thamali R. Jayawickrama, Nils Erland L. Haugen, Matthaus U. Babler, M. A. Chishty, Kentaro Umeki, The effect of Stefan flow on Nusselt number and drag coefficient of spherical particles in non-isothermal gas flow, International Journal of Multiphase Flow 140  (2021) 103650. [link to the article (open access)] 

• Thamali R. Jayawickrama, Nils Erland L. Haugen, Matthaus U. Babler, M. A. Chishty, Kentaro Umeki, The effect of Stefan flow on the drag coefficient of spherical particles in a gas flow, International Journal of Multiphase Flow 117 (2019)130-137. [link to the article (open access)] 

• Amit Kumar Biswas, Kentaro Umeki, Simplification of devolatilization models for thermally-thick wood particles: differences between wood logs and pellets, Chemical Engineering Journal, 274 (2015) 181-191. [link to the article] 

• Kentaro Umeki, Kawnish Kirtania, Luguang Chen, Sankar Bhattacharya, Fuel particle conversion of pulverised biomass during pyrolysis in an entrained flow reactor, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research 51 (2012) 13973-13979. [link to the article] 

• Kentaro Umeki, Seon-ah Roh, Tai-jin Min, Tomoaki Namioka, Kunio Yoshikawa, A simple expression for the apparent reaction rate of large wood char gasification with steam, Bioresource Technology 101 (2010), 4187-4192. [link to the article]