Further Improvement of Fluidized Bed Models by Incorporating Zone Method with Aspen Plus Interface

While providing a fast and accurate tool of simulating fluidized beds, the major limitation of classical zero-dimensional ideal reactor models used in process simulators, such as models built into commercial software (e.g. Aspen Plus®), has been the difficulties of involving thermal reciprocity between each reactor model and incorporating heat absorption by the water wall and super-heaters which is usually specified as model inputs rather than predicted by the models themselves. This aspect is of particular importance to the geometry design and evaluation of operating conditions and flexibility of fluidized beds. This paper proposes a novel modelling approach to resolve this limitation by incorporating an external model that marries the advantages of zone method and Aspen Plus in a robust manner. The improved model has a relatively modest computing demand and hence may be incorporated feasibly into dynamic simulations of a whole power plant.