Large-Eddy Simulation of Alkali Metal Reacting Dynamics in a Preheated Pulverized-Coal Jet Flame Using Tabulated Chemistry

This paper proposed an approach to modeling alkali metal reacting dynamics in turbulent pulverized-coal combustion (PCC) using tabulated sodium chemistry. With tabulation, detailed sodium chemistry can be incorporated in large-eddy simulation (LES), but the expenses of solving stiff Arrhenius equations can be avoided. The sodium release rate from a pulverized-coal particle is assumed to be proportional to the pyrolysis rate, as a simplification. The chemical forms of released sodium is assumed to be atomic sodium Na, because atomic sodium is predicted to be the favoured species in a flame environment. A detailed sodium chemistry mechanism including 5 sodium species, i.e., Na, NaO, NaO2, NaOH and Na2O2H2, and 24 elementary reactions is tabulated. The sodium chemistry table contains four coordinates, i.e., the equivalence ratio, the mass fraction of the sodium element, the gas-phase temperature, and the progress variable. Apart from the reactions of sodium species, hydrocarbon volatile combustion has been modeled by a partially stirred reactor concept. Since the magnitude of sodium species is very small, i.e., at the ppm level, and the reactions of sodium species are slower than volatile combustion, one-way coupling is used for the interaction between the sodium reactions and volatile combustion, i.e., the former having no influence on the latter. A verification study has been performed to compare the predictions on sodium species evolutions in zero-dimensional simulations using the chemistry table against directly using the detailed sodium mechanism under various initial conditions, and their agreement is always good. The PCC-LES solver used in the present study is validated on a pulverized-coal jet flame ignited by a preheated gas flow. Good agreements between the experimental measurements and the LES results have been achieved on gas temperature, coal burnout and lift-off height. Finally, the sodium chemistry table is incorporated into the LES solver to model sodium reacting dynamics in turbulent pulverized-coal combustion. Properties of Loy Yang brown coal, for which sodium data are available, are used. Characteristics of the reacting dynamics of the 5 sodium species in a pulverized-coal jet flame are then obtained. The results show that Na and NaOH are the two major sodium species in the pulverized-coal jet flame. Na, the atomic sodium, has a high concentration in fuel-rich regions; while the highest NaOH concentration is found in regions close to the stoichiometric condition. It should be pointed out that the proposed chemistry tabulation approach can be extended to modeling potassium reacting dynamics in turbulent multiphase biomass combustion. (CSPE)