Parametric study of thermal and thermodynamic properties on pyrolysis of biomass in thermally thick regime

In the present study, a simultaneous chemical kinetics and heat transfer model is used to predict the effects of the most important thermal and thermodynamic properties (thermal conductivity, heat transfer coefficient, emissivity and heat of reaction number) of the feedstock on the convective-radiant pyrolysis of biomass fuels. A finite difference pure implicit scheme utilizing the tri-diagonal matrix algorithm is employed for solving the heat transfer model equation. The Runge-Kutta fourth-order method is used for the chemical kinetics model equations. Simulations are performed considering cylindrical pellets of equivalent radius ranging from 0.003 to 0.011 m and temperatures ranging from 303 to 900 K. For conversion in the thermally thick regime (intra-particle heat transfer control), it is found that variations in the properties mainly affect the activity of the primary reactions. Sensitivity analysis is conducted to find the most dominant properties affecting the pyrolysis and found that the highest sensitivity Is associated with the emissivity and thermal conductivity of the biomass. Applications of these findings in reactor design and operation are discussed. The results obtained using the improved models are in excellent agreement with the experimental data, much better than the agreement with the earlier models reported in the literature. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.