Modelling of Biomass Pyrolysis in Fluidized Bed for Bioenergy Generation: A Scalability Study

This study investigates the potential of mathematical and computational modeling to optimize bio-oil production through biomass pyrolysis in a fluidized bed reactor. We performed Eulerian-Eulerian simulations, modeling a polydisperse mixture of inert sand and reactive biomass particles suspended in a hot air stream. Biomass decomposition was simulated using the RANZI kinetic reaction scheme, and all simulations were conducted with the open-source CFD software OpenFOAM. Additionally, we evaluated the performance of the code by performing scalability tests to identify the optimal computational configuration, focusing on minimizing calculation time and analyzing the impact of input/output (I/O) operations on simulation efficiency. Our results indicate that the hydrothermodynamic behavior of the bed and the properties of the biomass influence the yield of the products. In particular, the control of the temperature field within the reactor seems to be crucial to ensure efficient biomass conversion. Scalability tests further revealed that increasing the number of processors per node decreases calculation time, primarily due to the faster intra-node communication compared to inter-node communication.