Characterization of biomass combustion at high temperatures based on an upgraded single particle model

Highlights: • High temperature rapid biomass combustion is studied based on single particle model. • Particle size changes in devolatilization and char oxidation models are addressed. • Time scales of various thermal sub-processes are compared and discussed. • Potential solutions are suggested to achieve better biomass co-firing performances. - Abstract: Biomass co-firing is becoming a promising solution to reduce CO₂ emissions, due to its renewability and carbon neutrality. Biomass normally has high moisture and volatile contents, complicating its combustion behavior, which is significantly different from that of coal. A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) combustion model of a single biomass particle is employed to study high-temperature rapid biomass combustion. The two-competing-rate model and kinetics/diffusion model are used to model biomass devolatilization reaction and char burnout process, respectively, in which the apparent kinetics used for those two models were from high temperatures and high heating rates tests. The particle size changes during the devolatilization and char burnout are also considered. The mass loss properties and temperature profile during the biomass devolatilization and combustion processes are predicted; and the timescales of particle heating up, drying, devolatilization, and char burnout are compared and discussed. Finally, the results shed light on the effects of particle size on the combustion behavior of biomass particle