Review on CFD Modelling of Fluidized Bed Combustion Systems based on Biomass and Co-firing

Fluidized bed combustion (FBC) technology has been used effectively for burning conventional fuels long time back. Due to serious environmental concerns and sustainable development approach worldwide, their use in biomass derived furnaces as well in co-firing systems has also proved to be a successful venture since last few years. To analyze, design and optimize the performance of such full scale plants, the need of computational models raised due to time consuming process and high operating costs involved for obtaining data and detailed measurements. In this study an extensive review of CFD applications in FBC systems based on biomass and co-firing has been performed. Basic fluid flow models, different approaches and additional physical and combustion models used in CFD are presented in this paper. At last it is summarized that CFD models provided satisfactory results while validating them in most of the cases. However few challenges are definitely faced for running accurate simulations especially in 3D problems of large scale plants.