Abstract
To develop biomass combustion as a viable renewable energy source it is necessary to improve the furnace efficiency and investigate the potential of agricultural wastes as fuels. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modeling is a valuable tool to accomplish these objectives, OpenFOAM is a powerful open-source CFD software that has been little used in this type of application. This paper reports the study of combustion in a device of great importance for Colombia, the panela furnace, using a model developed in OpenFOAM. The combustion chamber of a Ward-Cimpa furnace, measuring 2.68 m in width and 3.32 m in height was modeled. This model was validated, by comparing the simulated values of CO and temperature at the furnace exit with data taken from literature, resulting in differences of 13.72 % and 12.23 % respectively. These discrepancies are slightly lower than those reported in other studies about the subject. The model was employed to analyze the effect of the air-flow rate on the combustion performance. The findings indicate that the increase in air-flow causes an increase in combustion activity manifested in higher temperature and CO2 emissions, which could indicate that in common operational conditions, the furnace operates under deficient air conditions and its performance could be improve by using higher air flow rates.