Numerical Modelling of Wood Gasification in Thermal Plasma Reactor II. Parametric Study for Currents 400–600 A

Biomass gasification is a renewable technology for energy storage and hydrogen production. As a model example, in an earlier paper by Hirka et al. Plasma Chem. Plasma Process. (2017) 37:947–965, the gasification process of crushed wood was numerically modelled for three different mean diameters of the feed particles in a reactor using a water and argon generated DC-plasma torch at a current of 400 A and compared with experimental data of the composition at the reactor outlet. Good agreement with experiment was obtained, however, a more extensive parametric study is desirable for more general conclusions and optimization of operating conditions, which is the subject of this paper. Here, currents of 400, 500, and 600 A and multiple mean particle diameters ranging from 0.2 to 20 mm were studied. The resulting parameters were averaged over a sufficiently long iterative process. The resulting characteristics include temperature, velocity, current field distributions, molar fraction of synthesis gas, as well as discrete phase and particle trajectories. With increasing diameter from about 1 mm, the produced synthesis gas becomes concentrated in the center of the reactor chamber. The numerical model has been created using ANSYS Fluent software.