Numerical Simulation of Downdraft Biomass Gasifier With Computational Fluid Dynamic

Abstract

World energy demand has resulted in a surge in renewable energy needs. One of them is biomass. The gasification process takes place in a reactor called a gasifier, and the most effective way is to implement the Fixed Bed method on the downdraft gasifier. The process was executed in a downdraft gasifier because of the gas-making process without stopping the ignition and producing a small amount of tar. The biomass raw material used in this study is wood pellets because of their abundant availability in Indonesia. This research discussed numerical simulations for downdraft gasifier by utilizing wood pellet biomass as a raw material. The simulation technique is computational fluid dynamic with the DPM (Discrete Phase Model) because it can predict the experiment result details more precisely. The simulation results have shown that the convergence rate got better with the longer process iteration time. The simulation results were close to 100% in real-scale laboratory research results.