Modelling of combustion in a single-burner biogas fired cooking stove

Abstract

A variety of stoves are used for household cooking in Sri Lanka. Fuel-wood, Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), Electricity, Kerosene oil, Biogas etc. are the common cooking fuels used. Combustion process in a cooking stove is a complicated phenomenon. It is very difficult to predict the distributions of temperature, flow properties and combustion product concentrations of the cooking stove. It is emphasized that a detailed understanding of the combustion process taking place in a cooking stove is essential for the development of better stove designs. Computational modeling is an efficient tool that could be used successfully in describing the combustion in cooking stoves. Modeling of combustion in a cooking stove that uses a gaseous fuel is comparatively easier than that uses a solid fuel, mainly due to the complexity of the combustion process that the solid fuel undergoes. On this basis present work is involved in the modeling of combustion taking place in a biogas fired cooking stove using SOFIE, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) code extensively used for fire modeling. The combustion flow field of the stove has been modeled using the k-e turbulence model for turbulence and one-step reaction fast chemistry represents combustion chemistry. Simulations arc conducted for the biogas cooking flame alone and also for the single-burner biogas fired stove with a square- shaped cooking pan. Temperature, density and combustion product concentration predictions have been made using simulations. The predicted temperatures are compared with the experimental measurements. The results generated could be used as a basis for further research in combustion in cooking stoves in order to develop better designs.