Prediction of power station combustors

• Published in: Symposium, International, on Combustion Vol. 21; no. 1; pp. 285 - 292
• Main Authors: Abbas, A.S., Lockwood, F.C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 1988
• ISSN: 0082-0784
• DOI: 10.1016/S0082-0784(88)80256-X

The application is described of a fully three-dimensional mathematical model to the combustors of two large power station boilers: one front wall-fired and the other corner-fired. Predictions for the flow aerodynamics are compared with experimental data obtained in cold models. Predictions for the combustion and radiation heat transfer for the corner-fired case are also obtained. The eulerian partial differential equations governing the transport of mass, momentum, energy and turbulent mixing are cast into finite-difference form and solved by an iterative procedure. Closure of the time-averaged equations of the mean flow is obtained with assistance of the k-ε turbulence model. The radiation transfer is handled by the flexible and economic ‘discrete transfer’ technique: special grids and computational procedures are employed to handle the burner inlet, hopper and nose boundary conditions. The isothermal velocity predictions are in fairly good agreement with the model data, leading to the conclusion that predictions of full-scale plant of value to designers should be achievable with current day mathematical models of the present kind.