Citation: Xie, Z.; Jiang, L.; Cen, Z.;
Zhang, H.; Zhang, B.; Zhu, J.
Simulation Study on Coil of Biomass
Carbonization Kettle. Materials 2022,
15, 2152. https://doi.org/10.3390/
ma15062152
Academic Editors: Carlos
Garcia-Mateo, Alberto Campagnolo
and Alberto Sapora
Received: 7 February 2022
Accepted: 11 March 2022
Published: 15 March 2022
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral
with regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional affil-
iations.
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
Article
Simulation Study on Coil of Biomass Carbonization Kettle
Zuoran Xie
1
, Lei Jiang
2
, Zhibo Cen
3
, Hao Zhang
1
, Bayang Zhang
1
and Jue Zhu
1,
*
1
Key Laboratory of Impact and Safety Engineering, Ningbo University, Ministry of Education,
818 Fenghua Road, Jiangbei District, Ningbo 315211, China; 1911081014@nbu.edu.cn (Z.X.);
1911081102@nbu.edu.cn (H.Z.); 2111031139@nbu.edu.cn (B.Z.)
2
Ningbo Special Equipment Inspection and Research Institute, 1588 Jiangnan Road, Yinzhou District,
Ningbo 315211, China; x3195286769@126.com
3
Ningbo Metrology and Testing Institute, 1588 Jiangnan Road, Ningbo National Hi-Tech Zone,
Ningbo 315211, China; c327311@126.com
* Correspondence: zhujue@nbu.edu.cn
Abstract:
The damage and failure of coiling tube in biomass carbonization kettle due to the long-term
operation was discussed. According to the actual structure of the carbonization kettle, a three-
dimensional model was established, and the temperature field was simulated based on the given
design parameters. The results show that the temperature distribution is stable during 440~450
◦
C,
and the relative error with the actual temperature 449.2
◦
C, which is about 0.78%. The tensile
specimens made of 20G steel, the common material of the coil, was placed in a tubular furnace, and
the real heat treatment conditions were simulated with mixed gas and water vapor. After that, the
uniaxial tensile test was carried out on MTS testing machine. The obtained physical parameters such
as yield strength and elastic modulus were substituted into the numerical temperature field model
to obtain the stress field model. The simulation results indicate that during the initial ventilation of
the equipment, the coil compressed with the maximum stress of 8.3 MPa at the bending point of the
second and fourth laps and partial failure was prone to occur, which is consistent with the actual coil
failure result.
Keywords: numerical simulation; temperature field; stress field; heat treatment; tensile test
1. Introduction
Because traditional fossil energy will release a lot of harmful substances such as CO
2
,
SO
x
, NO
x
, and dust in the process of utilization, aggravating the deterioration of the
environment, and its reserves are decreasing day by day. In the Energy Production and
Consumption Revolution Strategy (2016–2030) of the National Development and Reform
Commission in China, it is pointed out that the reform of energy structure should be
comprehensively arranged, the consumption of coal and other primary energy should be
reduced, and the development of clean energy should be promoted [
1
]. However, China,
as a traditional agricultural country, has vast biomass energy reserves. If the efficient
mining and utilization of crop surplus value are realized, it will bring vast environmental
and economic benefits [
2
]. Biomass carbonization is a technology that rationally uses
the surplus value of crops. It makes use of internal or external heat sources to generate
volatiles from biomass pyrolysis and obtain biomass solid carbon, so as to reduce the use
of traditional coal.
In view of the problems of low carbonization output, low yield of traditional biomass
carbonization kettle, and uneven quality of carbon products [
3
,
4
], the project team made
a breakthrough on the preparation of biomass molding particles in “Research on Key
Technologies and Equipment for the Preparation of Low-Energy Consumption Biomass
Molding Fuel”. The proprietary technology for preparing biomass solid carbon [
5
] by
one-step drying-catalysis-carbonization method of indirect heating of biomass pellets with
external heat source is proposed. The production process is shown in Figure 1.
Materials 2022, 15, 2152. https://doi.org/10.3390/ma15062152 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/materials
