Eulerian Model for Municipal Solid Waste Gasification in a Fixed-Bed Plasma Gasification Melting Reactor

Plasma gasification melting (PGM) is a promising waste-to-energy process, which provides many features superior to those of conventional gasification. In this work, a steady Euler–Euler multiphase model is developed to predict the performance of municipal solid waste (MSW) gasification inside a PGM reactor. The model considers the main chemical and physical processes, such as drying, pyrolysis, homogeneous reactions, heterogeneous char reactions, and melting of the inorganic components of MSW. The model is validated by one experimental test of a pilot reactor. The characteristics of PGM gasification, such as temperature distribution, syngas composition, tar yield, and energy conversion ratio (ECR, chemical energy of the gas phase divided by the total energy input), at the proposed condition are discussed. A total of nine cases are used to investigate the effects of the equivalence ratio (ER) and plasma power with a fixed flow rate of MSW. It is found that the ER has a positive effect on the cold gas efficiency of PGM gasification. However, the increase of the ER is restricted by the peak temperature. The influence of the plasma power then is not obvious for PGM gasification.