DFG Grant Renewal for "Oxyflame"
Scientists from Aachen, Bochum and Darmstadt collaborate in the transregional Collaborative Research Center (TRR) funded by the German Research Foundation DFG.
The DFG Grant Committee has approved to extend the funding period of the SFB/Transregio “Oxyflame – Development of Methods and Models to Describe the Reaction of Solid Fuels in an Oxy-Fuel Atmosphere“ for another four-year period.
Collaborative Research Centers, SFB for short, are university-based research institutions which are established for a period of up to twelve years. By bringing together researchers and resources from different fields and disciplines, they make it possible to address demanding research projects on a long term basis. SFBs thus help to establish institutional priority areas and promote structural development. Transregional SFBs, TRR for short, are jointly proposed and carried out by two or three universities.
In the Oxyflame SFB/Transregio, researchers from RWTH Aachen, Ruhr-Universität Bochum and Technische Universität Darmstadt are pooling their expertise in the fields of homogenous gas combustion and heterogeneous particle combustion. Spokesperson for the transregional research center is Professor Reinhold Kneer from the RWTH Institute of Heat and Mass Transfer.
Novel Combustion Behavior
With the aim of deriving validated and generalized models, the SFB/Transregio investigates the fundamentals of solid fuel oxy-fuel combustion in a gaseous atmosphere which consists mainly of carbon dioxide, water, and oxygen. In comparison to air-based combustion, this entirely different furnace atmosphere may influence all transport processes involved, whereby the underlying size scales of the processes range from nanometers (pore diffusion within fuel particles) to typical furnace dimensions (10 – 100 m).
Scale resolution and identification of the dominating transport process mechanisms is achieved via small-scale fundamental generic experiments and laboratory-scale validation experiments. Modeling and model development efforts comprise dynamic molecular scale simulations, turbulence modeling and resolving methods (LES) as well as full scale resolution methods (DNS) for all relevant scales.
In collaboration with commercial software providers, the simulation models and methods developed in the SFB/Transregio will be used for the development of a tool that supports plant manufacturers and operators in developing burners and boilers in a faster and more cost-efficient manner.
For the continuation of the SFB/Transregio, the German Research Foundation will provide a total of 9.6 million euros, to be distributed among the three participating universities.
For further information, please visit the Oxyflame web pages of the RWTH Institute of Heat and Mass Transfer.