Development of a reference one-dimensional pyrolysis experiment

Details

Supervisors

Jeanmart, Hervé

Faculty

Ecole polytechnique de Louvain

Degree label

Master [120] : ingénieur civil mécanicien

Abstract

Pyrolysis is the key step in all thermochemical biomass conversions and in the thermal protection systems of the spacial vehicles. However, these two applications are studied by different scientific communities developing their own model and code. In this work, we present the design of an experiment to benchmark the codes of both communities by permitting to measure the temperature and mass evolution of a macroscopic particle experiencing a high external heating flux in a set up allowing to assume the one-dimensionality of the problem. A general design of this experiment has first been made. Then its dimensions have been computed with a two-dimensional preliminary model such as the difference in temperature profile of this model with a fully one-dimensional one is minimized. We have finally been able to approximate this difference thanks to the SPY algorithm. We can thus assess that the design presented in this work allows to measure the temperature and mass evolution with a difference of a few percents compared to a fully one-dimensional problem.