Numerical Investigation on Multiphase Reacting/Combusting Turbulent Flows: Aerodynamics, Kinetics, Heat and Mass Transfer Inside a Cement Kiln Precalciner

This paper reports the modeling work to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) engineering application, based on an appropriate 3D mathematical model able to perform the thermo-fluid dynamic numerical simulation of multiphase reacting/ combusting turbulent flows within a precalciner of an industrial four-stage cyclone preheater/precalciner cement kiln. In the precalciner furnace the hot micron-sized limestone (calcite/dolomite) meal, held in suspension, is quiet completely converted to quicklime (CaO(s)), and the CO2(g) by-product is driven-off during calcination process. Since, the thermal decomposition mechanism is a very endothermic reaction, the necessary heat is balanced by pulverized petcoke combustion. These major physical and chemical processes inside the precalciner are properly described by the 3-D Favre-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with the species transport equations, the energy equation and the state equation, to be solved by an Eulerian-Lagrange approach. The CFD solver employed in this study is the commercial CFD code ANSYS Fluent R18.2. The used built-in models/sub-models include turbulence models and near-wall treatment, model of traditional air-pulverized petcoke combustion, pulverized-limestone calcination model, as well as the sub-models for radiation heat transfer and turbulence-chemistry interaction. They are used to formulate the closures of the unclosed terms in the PDEs system. In summary, the trends of predicted results of limestone calcination and petcoke/TDF combustion processes in an industrial precalciner furnace are reasonable fair in confront to operation data measurable in the harsh environment conditions, typical for the pyroprocessing systems. The developed CFD engineering application can be used as an effective design tool for preliminary examination of the global effect of thermal-flow aerodynamics and turbulence on the precalciner processes.