Modification of Gas Inlet Design in Pyrolysis Reactors by using Computational Fluid Dynamics for the Optimization of Bio-Oil Production from Biomass Waste Mixture

The bio-oil production process from biomass waste can be carried out by using a pyrolysis reactor. Pyrolysis is a thermochemical decomposition process of organic materials through a heating process without oxygen, where the raw material will undergo a chemical structure breakdown into a gas phase. The nitrogen gas is needed to suppress or remove the oxygen during the pyrolysis process. Nitrogen flow in a good biomass pyrolysis reactor needs to pay attention to the speed of nitrogen without ignoring the volume of gas storage. For this reason, one thing that can be studied further is the geometry of the inlet of the biomass pyrolysis device. Inlet geometry can be varied based on several parameters, including variations in inlet shape that can affect flow pressure. Therefore, in this research, calculations will be carried out using computational fluid dynamics to obtain optimal outlet velocity and pressure drop results. The simulation will be carried out using inlet discharge data, namely 1 L/min, 2 L/min and 3 L/min which is converted into inlet velocity data. The results show that the modified inlet gas produces a flow rate with a lower pressure and also spreads the nitrogen gas more evenly inside the reactor compared to the unmodified inlet gas.