The effects of air flow rate simulation on the combustion characteristics of luecaena woodchip in a fixed bed

Combustion of woodchip is one of the key areas in the clean energy strategy, but there is still a lack of detailed and systematic theoretical study on the fixed bed burning. The advantage of theoretical study lies in its ability to reveal features of the detailed structure of the burning process inside a solid bed, such as reaction zone thickness, the rate of individual sub-processes, gas emission, and char burning characteristics. These characteristics are hard to measure by conventional experimental techniques. In this study, a mathematical simulation was carried out for the combustion of lucaena woodchip in bench-top fixed bed and the effects of air flow rate have been assessed over wide ranges were investigated. It was found that volatile release as well as char burning intensify with an increase in the air flow until critical point was reached where a further increase in the air flow results in slowing down of the combustion process; a higher air flow also reduces the char fraction burned in the char burning stage and reduces CO emission in the gas exiting at the bed top.