Physics

Geology

Packed bed

Organic chemistry

Heat transfer

Mechanics

Biomass (ecology)

Oceanography

Engineering

Coupling (piping)

Particle size

Composite material

Computational fluid dynamics

Discrete element method

Chemistry

Materials science

Scale (ratio)

Particle (ecology)

Quantum mechanics

Pyrolysis

Chemical engineering

Chromatography

CFD-DEM

AIChE Journal

An efficient biomass pyrolysis process requires a comprehensive understanding of the chemical and physical phenomena that occur at multi‐length and time scales. In this study, a multiscale computational approach was developed and validated for biomass pyrolysis in a packed‐bed reactor by integrating pyrolysis kinetics, a particle scale model, and Superquadric Discrete Element Method‐Computational Fluid Dynamics (SuperDEM‐CFD) in open‐source code MFiX. A one‐dimensional particle–scale model that discretizes the characteristic length of biomass particle into layers was developed to predict the intraparticle phenomena inside a single particle. The 1D model was validated by comparing it with a single biomass particle pyrolysis experiment. A recently developed SuperDEM‐CFD model was employed to simulate the non‐spherical particle–particle contact and fluid‐particle interaction. The coupled model was applied to simulate the pyrolysis of cubic biomass particles in a packed bed and validated by comparing with experimental data. Simulation with and without particle–scale model was compared, and the effect of the gas–solid heat transfer models was also investigated.

Coupling particle scale model and <scp>SuperDEM‐CFD</scp> for multiscale simulation of biomass pyrolysis in a packed bed pyrolyzer

Coupling particle scale model and SuperDEM‐CFD for multiscale simulation of biomass pyrolysis in a packed bed pyrolyzer