Simplification of a mechanistic model of biomass combustion for on-line computations

Increasing utilization of intermittent energy resources requires flexibility from energy boilers which can be achieved with advanced control methods employing dynamic process models. The performance of the model-based control methods depends on the ability of the underlying model to describe combustion phenomena under varying power demand. This paper presents an approach to the simplification of a mechanistic model developed for combustion phenomena investigation. The aim of the approach is to simplify the dynamic model of biomass combustion for applications requiring fast computational times while retaining the ability of the model to describe the underlying combustion phenomena. The approach for that comprises three phases. In the first phase, the main mechanisms of heat and mass transfer and limiting factors of the reactions are identified in each zone. In the second phase, each of the partial differential equations from the full scale model are reduced to a number of ordinary differential equations (ODEs) defining the overall balances of the zones. In the last phase, mathematical equations are formulated based on the mass and energy balances formed in the previous step. The simplified model for online computations was successfully built and validated against industrial data.