A CFD Study of Sawdust Combustion in a Furnace

This paper is about a study of sawdust combustion in a down-shot fired furnace burning semi-anthracite coal. The study is based on the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method using FLUENT software, and was carried out in collaboration with RWE npower. In this study, sawdust was co-fired with coal via the direct firing method, i.e. through separate biomass injectors. The main objective of this study was to gain a better understanding about combustion of sawdust particles. Consequently, the CFD was limited to the part of the furnace above the burner arch, and complete coal combustion was assumed at this point. The investigation was based on typical biomass properties and a typical design of injector.