Dynamic visualization of the combustion processes in boilers

Abstract

This paper focuses on the simulation and visualisation of coal combustion in the pulverised coal boilers. It is important to find optimal boiler configurations (both for the ecological and economical reasons), determine appropriate combustibles, optimize process of combustion, etc. These tasks are typically solved using traditional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) methods that are in general computationally very expensive. Our work is based on a different approach. We use simplified methods for determining direction and speed of air stream in particular places in the boiler. Further we use simplified methods for the simulation of combustion processes and heat transfer as well. A particle system is used to simulate and visualise the behaviour of the coal particles and air streams in voxelized boiler space. We developed concept of virtual particles – they represent certain amount of coal, air, ash and other materials in a voxel under investigation.