Diseño y simulación de un equipo generador de biocarbón utilizando materia orgánica residual

Abstract

The objective of this work is the detailed design of a pyrolyzer that uses organic solid waste with low moisture content as a raw material. For the thermal design, a simulation was carried out with the OpenFoam software that allowed to manipulate the variables of the process such as: temperature, particle size, heating rate, etc. The simulation was performed with three different temperatures; 673, 773 and 873 K, at atmospheric pressure (1 atm) and with a retention time of 30 minutes, in all of this three cases. From the simulation of the pyrolysis process three products were obtained: biochar, biogas and bio-oil. With the results obtained and using mainly heat transfer and mechanic of materials equations, the parts of the equipment were dimensioned, obtaining a mobile equipment as compact (0,9 m high by 0,52 m in diameter) and light (146 kg) as possible, to process a load of 10 kg of biomass, with the capacity to crush said biomass in a more homogenous form before the pyrolysis process and with a post-processing system for the separation of biogas and bio-oil. The simulation based on the solver biomassGasificationFoam shows that at a lower temperature, a greater amount of biochar is obtained, that the heating rate has a greater influence in static reactors, and that this type of software is of great help in optimizing designs of thermochemical reactors. Under this conditions, the composition of the resulting products was 17,5 % biochar, 11 % biogas and 71,5 % bio-oil.