A 3D modeling of static and forward smoldering combustion in a packed bed of materials

A three-dimensional (3D) model based on the first principles of mass, momentum and energy was developed that numerically simulates the processes of static and forward smoldering in a porous packed bed of plant materials. The packed bed contains cellulose material or tobacco (cigarette) wrapped in a porous paper and surrounded by an ambient air. Other major characteristics of the model are including the effects of buoyancy forces in the flow field, separate treatment of solid and gas in a thermally non-equilibrium environment, and use of multi-precursor kinetic models for the pyrolysis of staring material and oxidation of char. The changes in porosity due to pyrolysis and char oxidation and the effect of porosity on the bed permeability and gas diffusivity are included. The mass, momentum, energy, and species transport equations are solved in a discretized computational domain using a commercially available computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The simulation results show that the model reasonably reproduces the major features of a burning cigarette during smoldering and puffing and are in a good agreement with the existing experimental results for cigarettes. Results include the velocity profiles, gas and solid temperatures, coal shape, burn rates, profile and transport of gas and vapor species throughout the packed bed, dilution through the wrapper paper and ventilation in the filter section, and the mass fraction of some pyrolysis and oxidation products in the mainstream and sidestream flows.