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Advances in Engineering Software 33 (2002) 793–804

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Simulation of air flow in the typical boiler windbox segments

C. Bhasker*
BHEL R&D Division, Vikasnagar, Hyderabad 500 093, India
Received 6 June 2002; accepted 31 July 2002

Abstract
Simulation of turbulent air flow distribution in CFBC furnace, wherein primary air is entrained through inlet duct system called windbox,
is attempted through state of art CAD/CFD softwares. Establishment of flow in windbox channel, distributed plate nozzle and combustor is
complicated, due to sharp turns and presence of several solid boundaries makes the fluid flow highly turbulent. Hence, the simulation process
is aimed in different parts to understand the flow behavior in each of the component associated with windbox. Towards this, the present paper
develops the basic understanding for airflow distribution in windbox channel, wherein air exit is considered only through 6 £ 3 array of
distributed plate nozzle bottom faces. This analysis also highlights that recirculation flow, at several locations of windbox channel/distributed
plate nozzle, which aids to generate high pressures zones and severe turbulent fluctuations. These effects in turn leads to unequal air-flow at
exit, which are unable to carry the incoming crashed coal particles and lime stones to furnace for efficient combustion. q 2002 Elsevier
Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: CFBC boiler; Air flow; Windbox channel; Distributed plate nozzles; Combustor geometry; Multi-block grids; Simulation of flow; Recirculation
flow; Unequal air flow

1. Introduction Equal distribution of air to burners is required for optimum

Over the last decade, circulating fluidized bed combus-
tion (CFBC) technology has demonstrated its ability [1] to
reliably burn a wide range of fuels in the large industrial and
utility steam generators, while meeting stringent emission
requirements. Recognizing this, Indian industries have
already opted for CFBC boilers for their new plants [2,3].
However, Indian coals are characterized by high ash
content, i.e. . 30%, high volatile matter . 15% and high
abrasive ash as reported in Ref. [4]. Due to these coal
characteristics, the components of CFBC suffers surface
erosion by particle impacts, resulting to performance
degradations. Therefore, there is a need to improve overall
cycle efficiency and minimize environmental impacts, while
controlling the emission rates.
One of the component of CFBC is primary air-inlet
system to boiler furnace, wherein experience of plant
manufacturers concern is mal-distribution of air [5 – 7], due
to momentum and pressure losses and hence, inefficient
combustion, high burner resistance and high emission rates.
* Tel.: þ91-40-764-1584; fax: þ 91-40-377-6320.
E-mail address: bskr2k@yahoo.com (C. Bhasker).
0965-9978/02/$ - see front matter q 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 6 5 - 9 9 7 8 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 8 2 - 0
performance. Simple modification can be made to redis-
tribute the air and correct existing air unbalances. These
modifications require the knowledge of the existing flow
pattern in primary air-inlet system.
Conventional engineering analysis rely heavily on
empirical correlations and experience to develop boiler
and auxiliary equipment designs. Today’s design processes
must be more accurate, while minimizing development
costs to compete in a world economy. This forces
engineering companies to take advantage of design tools,
which augment existing experience and empirical data,
while minimizing cost. One tool, which excels under these
conditions are numerical modeling through computational
fluid dynamics techniques.
The goal of numerical simulations are to improve the
design of new or existing boiler components by optimizing
the flow distribution. Examples of boiler related numerical
applications include furnaces, air supply ducts, windboxes,
coal piping, precipitators, pulverizers, burners and scrub-
bers. The simulation is aimed with the use of computational
fluid dynamic softwares, executing on high speed, large
memory workstations. Numerical modeling has significant
cost advantages, when compared to physical modeling and
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field testing. Also numerical modeling provides additional
insight into the physical phenomena being analyzed and
flexibility, with which, geometric changes can be studied.
The commercially procured software from AEA’s CFX-
TASCflow is employed in the present paper to understand
the air flow firstly in windbox channel and subsequently in
distributed plate nozzle and also through array of nozzles.
TASCflow solver is an advanced general purpose software,
which works on PC NT and Unix workstations with advance
features in terms of multi-block grid connections, boundary
conditions, choice of discretization schemes and solution
methods. The solver has been extensively applied to several
complex industrial systems and obtained good success,
whose details are outlined in Refs. [8 –11].
2. Description of problem
The CFB process utilizes a fluidized bed combustor in
which crushed coal and lime stones are suspended in a
stream of upward flowing air. Due to high velocities of gas,
the fine particles from coal fed pipes are carried out to
combustor. Combustion air is introduced into furnace at
multiple ports. About 40% combustion air is passed through
windbox as primary air, as shown in Fig. 1 and the balance
air is admitted as secondary air, through multiple ports in the
walls of combustor.
Fig. 1. CFBC sketch showing primary inlet housing for CFD modeling.
Modeling of burners and overfire air ports requires the
proper air distribution in the windbox channel so that the
losses in primary air-inlet system are minimum. Windbox
is used to transport the balanced air flow, which mixes
with coal and lime stones for efficient combustion in
boiler. Windbox typically involves inlet duct, channel,
distributed plate nozzles of the order several hundreds as
shown in Fig. 2, is proposed to use in flow solver, which
comprises 975 grid blocks, 495 grid interfaces and runs
into 500,000 grid points. Three-dimensional flow analysis
helps to reduce turning losses and burner resistance (i.e.
windbox to furnace differential pressure). This is one of
the source for air-imbalance and means that higher
burner resistance will offset some of the influence from
turning losses and estimation of these parameters for the
above grid needs heavy computational resources in terms
of high virtual memory.
Numerical simulation models are tends to large due to
complex flow structure in primary air-inlet system even
with scale down models due to presence of typical
configured nozzles. Domain discretization process com-
prises several thousands of structured multi-block grids
for coarse grid flow analysis, which runs into millions of
grid points. Problem setup takes considerable time for
elimination of several walls in the computational domain.
To avoid the solver failure for computation of flow in
such a large size geometrical problem, it is aimed to
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Fig. 2. Computational grid primary inlet air housing with several hundred nozzles.

study the flow pattern in different steps. Towards this,
the present paper simulates the turbulent flow firstly in
lower portion of windbox channel, whose top surface is
provided nozzles bottom faces are placed in staggered
array of rows and columns. Using appropriate flow
conditions flow simulation has been carried out in single
nozzle and array of nozzles.
3. Geometry creation
embedded in a single nozzle and several such nozzles are
placed in staggered rows on the distributed plate. The flow,
which is entering from the side duct to windbox channel and
takes different turns in the annular nozzles and leaves from
the outer annular region towards outlet. Though the
geometry has been created for lower portion of windbox
using the SDRC-IDEAS software initially, further geo-
metric modeling and grid generation has developed using
ICEM CAD software.

The dimensions of windbox of CFBC power plant is 4. Grid generation

typical primary air housing of windbox is about 12.24 m
height and 7.21 m width. At 6.8 m height of windbox, about A state-of-art CAD/Grid generation software
400 annular nozzles with different radii of cylinders package IDEAS from SDRC/USA is used to generate
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three-dimensional structured multi-block grid for wind-
box channel and side duct. The volume of multi-block
grid points are generated with the help of simulation
software module features, as universal file type, has been
imported in the flow solver. The resultant grid contains
about 100,000 grid points, as universal file, after
importing in TASCflow solver, is shown in Fig. 3,
which is free from negative volume and are in allowable
limits of required skew angles.
Using ICEM-CFD Powermesh software, computational
grid for nozzle portion has been generated separately, is
shown in Fig. 4. The grid comprises about 19 grid blocks
comprises about 10,000 grid points are however, contains
walls in flow domain, has been eliminated by physical
connection of corresponding faces in respective grid
blocks. Using the grid transformation features in solver,
computational grid for array of 6 £ 3 nozzles on the
distributed plate has been generated and shown in Fig. 5.
This grid is shown at the wall boundary, after removal of
walls in rows and columns of nozzles and bottom and
top portions in the computational domain are indicating
inlet and outlet regions. To avoid flow blockage between
different segments in the nozzles, required physical
Fig. 3. Computational grid for lower portion of air housing.
connections have been made between corresponding
grid planes.
5. Flow solver
The TASCflow commercial software package was
used to compute the flow in windbox channel, and
distributed plate nozzle. This software solves the three-
dimensional Navier – Stokes’ equations in strong conser-
vative form. A collocated variable arrangement is used to
solve primitive variables (pressure, Cartesian velocity
components) in stationary and rotating coordinate system.
Multi-block boundary fitted grids with local grid refine-
ments and physical connections of different types
between grids helps to solve the problem with more
ease. The transport equations are descretized using a
conservative finite volume method. Turbulence effects are
modeled using standard two equation k – 1 model. A
second order accurate skew upwind difference scheme
with physical advection correction scheme is employed. A
coupled algebraic multi-grid methods solves the system
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Fig. 4. Velocity vectors at different locations of lower portion of air housing.

Fig. 5. Flow lines at different locations of lower portions of air housing.

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of equations. Detailed descriptions for the mathematical
formulation and approximation are available in Ref. [12].
6. Boundary conditions and solution
To establish the flow simulation process, it has been
considered that turbulent incompressible air mass flow of
order 64 kg/s is entered at inlet duct of wind box. Different
cases have been obtained by applying the pressure
(below/above atmospheric and atmospheric conditions) at
the windbox exit. It is also considered that entrained fluid is
turbulent, whose intensity and length scales are of order 3
and 2%, respectively. With the help of more guidelines [13]
concerned to initial estimates, time step, etc., solution is
marched on the grid points in the computational domain, till
the maximum residuals for each scalar, i.e. mass, momen-
tum, turbulence intensity and length scalars are reached to
the target value 1 £ 1023. After obtaining the successful
converged solution, analysis has been repeated for the flow
in distributed plate nozzle.
7. Discussion of results
After obtaining the converged results, the result files, i.e.
.rso, are loaded into post processing and flow parameters in
terms of velocity vectors, streak lines, pressure and
turbulence effects are visualized in different planes of
Fig. 6. Static pressure distributions at different locations of lower portion of air housing.
lower portion of windbox. The velocity distribution at
different locations of windbox are shown in Fig. 6. From the
graph, it is seen that velocity distribution shows lot of
recirculation flows, which, in fact, increases over height of
windbox channel.
As a result, the uniform velocity which is supposed to
enter with equal magnitudes in distributed plate nozzles are
unequal. This behavior also clearly observed in the streak-
line plots shown in Fig. 7, wherein flow lines on speed scale,
in computational domain, travel towards exit after creating
the low velocity regions at bottom, right, left corners on top
side of lower portion of windbox. The behavior of velocity
components creates low pressure regions at recirculation
flow zones where turbulence effects are prevailing in those
regions are observed in Figs. 8 and 9.
To visualize the flow from the windbox channel to
distributor plate nozzles, turbulent incompressible air
flow through single nozzle is simulated and several
parametric results in different planes of nozzle are
obtained. The velocity vectors at different locations of
annular nozzle are shown in Fig. 10. As expected, flow
of velocity after reaching top of inner cylinder turns to
annulus region and leaves from the opening of bottom
side of outer nozzle towards outlet with unequal
velocities. It can be observed from the figure that
velocity distribution is highly non-uniform and its
intensity is less in the outlet regions except corner
locations. The corresponding streaklines plotted in same
plane is shown in Fig. 11, indicates the imbalance of
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Fig. 7. Turbulence intensity pattern at different locations of lower portion of air housing.

Fig. 8. Computational grid for nozzle on the distributed plate of air housing.
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Fig. 9. Velocity vectors in the nozzle on the distributed plate of air housing.

Fig. 10. Flow lines in the nozzle on the distributed plate of air housing.
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Fig. 11. Turbulence intensity pattern in the nozzle on the distributed plate of air housing.
airflow towards combustor region. At low velocity
regions, turbulent fluctuations prevailing at different
locations in computational domain are quite high as
shown in Fig. 12. Simulation has been extended to array
of inline nozzles and the results obtained are interpreted
in terms of velocity vectors and flow lines, shaded
pressure contours and turbulences loss pattern in the
computational domain. The velocity vectors are shown in
Fig. 13 indicates low velocities at some locations in the
nozzles and travels towards exit. Due to these low
velocities, possible recirculations causes unequal airflow
at the different locations of nozzles, as observed in
Fig. 14. As a result of typical flow distribution in the
array of distributed plate nozzles, locations of high
pressure and intensive turbulence effects are visualized in
Figs. 15 and 16.
8. Conclusions
Importance for understanding of air distribution pattern
in a typical CFBC boiler primary air-inlet system-windbox
segments with distributed plate nozzles, through CFD
techniques, are addressed. Due to complex nature of flow,
the analysis is presented in steps, firstly in windbox channel
and later in single nozzle of distributed plate nozzle to
understand flow distribution. This analysis also highlights
that recirculation flow in flow domain at several locations of
801
windbox channel/distributed plate nozzle aids to generate
high pressures/turbulent fluctuations. This results to unequal
air flow, which provides indications to carry the incoming
crashed coal particles and lime stones to furnace inefficient
combustion.
The basic understanding developed through CFD
techniques in the present paper has successfully identified
low velocity regions, where high pressures and intensive
turbulence effects are concentrated. The variations of these
parameters will have considerable impact on air flow
distribution to burner. More pronounced effects can be
brought out after completion of simulation in all com-
ponents of primary inlet system together. However,
computational grid generation is difficult process, analysis
of grid and elimination of walls prior to flow simulation
involves considerable time. The non-uniform air-flow
distribution to burner is very important to the production
of combustible products like carbon monoxides and
nitrogen oxides. The analysis tool can then be utilized to
recommend geometric changes so that the flow can be
redistributed and losses can be minimized. This process
continues until optimum solutions are obtained and requires
few weeks or a month, as one analysis may require three or
four alternates before finding acceptable arrangement, while
a similar analysis may require twenty. Nevertheless, due to
cost effectiveness and success of increased software
capabilities, numerical modeling will continue to grow in
simulation of power plant boiler auxiliaries.
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Fig. 12. Computational grid for the array of nozzles on the distributed plate of air housing.

Fig. 13. Velocity vectors in the array of nozzles on the distributed plate of air housing.
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Fig. 14. Flow lines in the array of nozzles on the distributed plate of air housing.

Fig. 15. Static pressure in the array of nozzles on the distributed plate of air housing.
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Fig. 16. Turbulence pattern in the array of nozzles on the distributed plate of air housing.
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