Modeling and Simulation of Petroleum Coke Calcination in Pot Calciner Using Two-Fluid Model

The aim of this work was to establish a mathematical model for the analysis of calcining process of petroleum coke in a 24-pot calciner via computational fluid dynamics (CFD) numerical simulation method. The model can be divided into two main parts (1) heterogeneous reacting flow of petroleum coke calcination in the pot was simulated using a two-fluid model approach where the gas and solid phase are treated as a continuous phases; and (2) the standard turbulence equations combined with the finite rate/eddy-dissipation combustion model and discrete ordinates model were solved for the turbulent gas reacting flow in the flue. The model of the calcining process was implemented in ANSYS Fluent 15.0 (commercial CFD software) and validated by industrial production data. After the validation research, the model has been applied to inspect the distribution features of the temperature field in the furnace, the concentration field of residual moisture and volatiles in the petroleum coke, and the vector velocity field of gas and solid phases. This research can provide a theoretical basis for optimizing the structure and improving the automatic control level of a pot calciner.