Sewage sludge combustion model with reduced chemical kinetics mechanisms

Commonly applied 3D CFD models lack suitable combustion description of fuels with complex composition, such as encountered in wastewater sludge specific applications. This significantly influences their prediction capability, in particular when used in small, confined combustion volumes. To tackle this challenge, it is necessary to introduce detailed chemical kinetic models for specifically tailored fuel surrogates, which ensure physically accurate description of local thermodynamic conditions and heat release rates. However, necessity to increase the level of detail of models needs to be balanced by their computational expenses to preserve their applicability when solving real engineering problems. With an aim to fill this gap, the present study significantly extends the existing surrogate model methods for applications in small-scale systems to include also reduced combustion kinetic mechanisms. The innovative extension applies Simulation Error Minimization Connectivity Method and involves tailoring of kinetic mechanisms to variable thermodynamic conditions and variable surrogate compositions, specific to sewage sludge combustion. Suitability of the proposed approach is confirmed with the 3-D CFD simulations maintaining similar level of accuracy within the design space of reduced mechanisms as well as in off-design conditions, while maintaining sufficient flexibility to adapt to different types and compositions of the sludge. Thereby, reduction of the in-model applied detailed ethanol and propene mechanisms from 47 and 71 species down to 33 and 34 species, respectively, was demonstrated together with linearly dependent decrease in computational time. The proposed model extension and resulting surrogate combustion model thus for the first time offer an efficient tool for affordable and accurate virtual design of small-scale combustion systems using fuels with complex chemical composition.

Automated summary

The study introduces an innovative approach to extend existing surrogate model methods for small-scale systems, incorporating simplified combustion kinetic mechanisms tailored to the specific thermodynamic conditions and surrogate compositions of sewage sludge combustion. This extension has been confirmed to offer an efficient tool for affordable and accurate design of small-scale combustion systems using fuels with complex compositions, maintaining accuracy and flexibility while reducing computational time.