Coupling the porous conditional moment closure with the random pore model: applications to gasification and CO₂ capture

Abstract

Gasification of coal or biomass with in situ CO₂ capture simultaneously allows production of clean hydrogen at relatively low cost and reduced emission of CO₂ into the atmosphere. Clearly, this technology has a great potential for a future carbon constrained economy. Therefore, the development of a comprehensive, physically-based gasifier model is important. The sub-models that describe reactive transport processes in coal particles as well as in particles of CO₂ sorbent material are among the key sub-models, which provide a necessary input for an overall gasifier model. Both coal and sorbent are materials that have complicated pore structures. The porous conditional moment closure (PCMC) model proves to be adequate for modeling reactive transport through porous media with fixed pore structure. Consumption of coal in the heterogeneous gasification reaction, however, widens the pores and reduces the surface area available for this reaction. At the same time, formation of a carbonate layer narrows the pores in the sorbent material and reduces the reaction rate of CO₂ sorption. In both cases the pore structures are affected. Such changes are not taken into account in the existing PCMC model. In this study, we obtain the parameters of the diffusive tracer distribution based on the pore size distribution given by the widely applied random pore model (RPM), while coupling PCMC with RPM. Such coupling allows taking into account changes in pore structure caused by heterogeneous reactions and thus improves the accuracy of these key sub-models.

Keywords

gasification / CO₂ capture / PCMC / RPM

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Department of Resources, Energy and Tourism under the Australia-China Joint Coordination Group on Clean Coal Technology grant scheme.

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2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg