Modeling on the Effect of Heat Exchanger Submersion on Controlling Spontaneous Combustion in A Coal Pile

Abstract

Spontaneous combustion of coal has been well-known as a problem faced by coal industries, especially in storing and trans-shipping processes. The negative impacts of this phenomenon have led to several hazardous incidents and degrading product quality. Several methods have been researched to minimize the impacts; one of the proposed ways is immersing heat exchangers inside the coal stockpile. An experiment was conducted to analyze the cooling effect of an immersed simple heat exchanger made of a copper coil. By varying the number of windings, the experiment showed a significant decrease in pile temperature due to the immersed heat exchanger. This work continues exploring the possibility of applying the method by observing and analyzing the simulation model. COMSOL Multiphysics was used to model the physics phenomena that occur within the coal reactor. The effect of the heat exchanger surface area was studied from the model to observe the heat propagation within the coal reactor. The vast reach of heat propagation from the heat exchanger through the coal pile on the simulation was promisingly showing that this method was useful to limit the occurrence of spontaneous fire in coal piles.

Modeling of Coal Spontaneous Fire in A Large-Scale Stockpile

“…The development of numerical studies related to spontaneous coal fires has entered the domain of CFDs (Taraba et al, 2014) and multiphysics simulations (Thabari et al, 2021;Saleh et al, 2017). Large-scale simulations with stockpile conditions exposed to prolonged ambient thermal exposure have been done before ( Zhang et al, 2016;Taraba et al, 2014,).…”

Coal Dust Severity in a Power Plant: In-Situ, Analytical, and Numerical Assessments

“…Coal is a flammable sedimentary rock that is also a versatile fossil fuel, consisting of a complex and heterogeneous mixture of mostly organic matter [1][2][3]. Because of its combustibility, coal is one of the most important energy sources, and it plays an important role in the global economy [4][5][6]. The use of coal as a fuel source, on the other hand, has a significant impact on both air quality and climate change [7,8].…”