Abstract

Internally circulating fluidized bed reactor (ICFB) is the system with combining the function of reactor, cyclones and loop seal of a conventional circulating fluidized bed reactor (CFB) into a single reactor column. In this type of reactor, the reactor column is separated into two sections (riser and downer) by baffles and is linked together via connecting ports. This system is then considered as compact operation when comparing with the conventional CFB reactor. However, the simplicity of the ICFB reactor is trade-off with a gas leakage which takes place between the two sections through the connecting ports. In addition, the solid particle movement inside the system can cause the erosion on the inserting pipes which are used for heating or cooling this ICFB reactor column. In this study, the system hydrodynamics and erosion behavior inside ICFB reactor with inserting pipe were investigated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using two-dimensional Eulerian-Eulerian model. The adjusted Gidaspow drag model was applied to compute the interaction between the gas and solid particle phases. Then, the system hydrodynamics was obtained and the wall shear stress was calculated in the existent of the erosion at the surface region of the inserting pipes. The results from this simulation were used to design the inserting pipe arrangement inside this ICFB reactor.