(624b) Application of the Direct Quadrature Method of Moments to Large Eddy Simulations of Coal Gasification

Utilization of domestic sources of fuel such as coal is growing increasingly important, but under increasing scrutiny. There is a critical need to retrofit existing industrial and applied-scale facilities using coal to meet regulatory requirements, and to explore new technologies and techniques for carbon emission reduction. With the continually increasing power of computational resources, predictive simulation tools are playing an increasingly important role in this process. To this end, an Eulerian dispersed-phase model, the direct quadrature method of moments (DQMOM), has been implemented in a massively-parallel large eddy simulation (LES) code, and applied to coal gasification. The DQMOM formulation for gasification of coal particles must characterize the multivariate number density function (NDF) as a function of several particle independent variables (internal coordinates), including particle composition, particle temperature, and particle size. Next, several issues relevant to the implementation of DQMOM are addressed. Preliminary LES gasification results are presented, compared to experimental data, and discussed. A successful implementation of DQMOM in the context of massively parallel large-eddy simulations of coal gasification is demonstrated. Several recent developments in DQMOM theory help pave the way for application to complex coupled physics problems such as coal gasification.