Oxy-Coal Power Boiler Simulation and Validation Through Extreme Computing

Paper from the AFRC 2014 conference titled Oxy-Coal Power Boiler Simulation and Validation Through Extreme Computing by P.J. Smith.

High carbon content is fast becoming a fuel quality constraint around the globe. We have studied the operation of a 15 MW boiler under oxy-coal firing with flue gas recirculation for carbon capture. This study was performed using high performance computing (hpc) at the extreme scale (two thousand processors per simulation) and dynamic large eddy simulation (LES). The HPC and LES in this study allowed for 1-2 cm resolution of the turbulence within the boiler and temporal resolution at the microsecond time scale. All of the scales of the particle transport and reaction are fully resolved (DNS) for the entire particle size distribution. Particle size segregation and clustering are spatially and temporal resolved. This study targeted a formal validation and uncertainty quantification for the heat flux as the specific quantity of interest as a function of wall thermal conductivity, fuel feed rate, and coal reactivity. Our validation approach identified the region of consistency between experimental and simulation data; thus, providing insight into the experimental measurements that could not be achieved without concurrent simulation and validation. This simulation and validation approach provides a path to accelerating deployment of new technologies.