A Numerical Study on Mixing Flow for Biomass Gastification

Biomass (animal and agricultural wastes etc) has great potential as a source of renewable and sustainable energy. The producer gas is normally generated through the biomass gastification process. Such producer gas is used in direct injection gas engines as combustible fuel that is having desired air-fuel ratio. The producer gas is generated in a device, namely, carburetor by mixing air and gaseous fuel. Generally, mixing occurs in carburetor is poor and hence baffles are used to enhance mixing phenomena inside the carburetor. In the present study, a numerical investigation has been carried out to study mixing phenomena with and without the baffles inside the carburetor. A numerical tool, namely computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool has been used to study the enhancement of mixing phenomena due to presence of baffles inside the carburetor. In order to capture the turbulent phenomena inside the carburetor, two dimensional k-ε equations have been considered together with flow equations as governing equations. In the present case CFD tool, namely COMSOL has been used to solve such two-dimensional governing equations. The present study shows i) detailed analysis of mixing phenomena inside carburetor ii) the effect of turbulence on the mixing phenomena with and without baffles will through various contour plots, vectots plots etc.