Modeling of biomass combustion on a reciprocating-grate super-heater

Biomass combustion on a 15.7 MW reciprocating grate is modeled by using two different methods. In the first approach, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) model of the gaseous reactive flow in the freeboard is coupled to an offline model of the biomass bed, that is treated as a series of perfectly stirred reactors. In the second approach, the eXtended Discrete Element Method (XDEM) is employed to describe the granular behavior of the biomass particles on the moving grate. Results are validated with a few temperature measurements.