Preliminary Study of Slow Pyrolysis for Banana Peel Biomass in Tube Chamber based on Computational Fluid Dynamics

Dry banana peel as a biomass can be converted towards bio-char using slow pyrolysis methods. The tube chamber that used where slow pyrolysis occur must be in relatively uniform temperature at to ensure the condition are fulfilled in the process. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method applied to estimate the temperature distribution inside the tube chamber and time needed for the uniformity of temperature is achieved. The tube chamber dimension is 36.5 cm of height with 7.7 cm diameters. The grid generation process performed for the chamber using full hexahedral cell with average orthogonal quality close to 1 that indicated excellent mesh. The observation plane placed right in the middle of tube chamber axially where 6 observation points was placed to observe the change of temperature over time. The simulation process take place in transient regime where the temperature change overtime. The heating sources with heat flux entering uniform in whole outer surface as the wall temperature will peak at 923 K. The heat balance and P1 radiation method was used to obtain the temperature distribution. The simulation results showed a good agreement compared to the experiments. The distribution temperature showed that minimum temperature for pyrolysis process (650°C) already achieved in all of the region. The uniformity of temperature itself achieved after the surfaces of tube chamber reached 650°C for more than 200 seconds.