0444-1

Multiphase CFD simulation and experimental validation of spent coffee

grounds pyrolysis in a bubbling fluidized bed reactor

Mukesh Upadhyay
School of Energy and Chemical Engineering
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, South Korea
e−mail: mukesh0223@unist.ac.kr

Ayeon Kim, Heehyang Kim, Boris Brigljević, SalaiSargunan S Paramanantham, Hankwon

Lim*
Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, South Korea
e−mail: hklim@unist.ac.kr;

Hoang Vu Ly, Seung-Soo Kim

Department of Chemical Engineering
Kangwon National University, Samcheok, Gangwon-do, South Korea

ABSTRACT
Spent Coffee Waste (SCW) originated from brewing coffee powders has grown dramatically,
hence suitable management of this solid biomass waste is imperative. The thermo-chemical
conversion of SCW solid biomass is the most promising approach to extract valuable products
in the form of biofuels and chemicals. Evaluating design and scale-up heuristics of bubbling
fluidized bed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation is not only cheaper and
easier but also provides key data for the whole reactor. A fast pyrolysis of SCW solid biomass
in a bubbling fluidized bed were simulated using transient Eulerian-Eulerian multiphase model.
Firstly, the developed model is validated against the experimental obtained hydrodynamic
profile. Followed by a validated hydrodynamic model were coupled with a SCW solid biomass
pyrolysis kinetic model for the prediction of product yields (gas, bio-oil, and char). The
simulation results of this investigation show good agreement with the experimentally observed
yield distribution. The influences of reactor operating conditions and reactor configuration on
the products yield were discussed. Overall, this study provides important guidelines for
possible reactor scale-up, intensification and optimization.

KEYWORDS
Spent Coffee waste, Bio-oil production, Fast Pyrolysis, CFD, Two-fluid model, Bubbling
fluidized bed.

INTRODUCTION
The thermochemical conversion via pyrolysis is the most promising way for residue biomass
conversion to produce biofuels and valuable bio-products [1]. Biomass is rapidly heated at
about 450 – 550°C, and inert conditions during the fast pyrolysis, producing solid (char or
biochar), noncondensing gas, and bio-oil (tar) [2]. Compared to conventional fossil fuel,
biomass is abundantly available in natural environments. Extensive work has been done on
bio-oil production from different type of biomass feedstock [3] [4] [5]. Bio-oils quality is low

* Corresponding author

1
0444-2

due to high oxygen content and also highly corrosive nature cause obstacles in various thermal
processing unit [6].
Among various biomass residues, spent coffee waste (SCW) is considered as attractive
raw material for energy and chemical production. Some of key advantages over other biomass
includes cost and low ash content [7]. During fast pyrolysis of SCW, Ngo et al. [8] reported
sufficient amounts of hydrocarbons, CO2 and CO, however no hydrogen. Bok et al. performed
pyrolysis experiment under different reaction temperatures and reported higher pH value with
less oxygen and hydrogen, compared to woody biomass [9]. Vardon et al. analyse SCW based
pyrolysis bio-oil, which has HHVs of 32.3 MJ kg-1 [10].
For the fast pyrolysis process, bubbling fluidized bed reactor is commonly used given
the advantage of simple design, easy to scale-up and particle mixing [11] [12]. Multiphase flow
behaviour in the fast pyrolysis bubbling fluidized bed reactor has been steadily studied
investigated. In the absence of safe and reliable techniques to gauge within the core reactor
especially under the harsh temperature and pressure operating conditions is difficult. Thus,
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation tool offers best effective and robust analysis
pathway.
Over the years, CFD simulation tool has steadily become a crucial tool for analysing,
designing, and enhancing the reactor engineering [13] [14]. Most commonly approach to
simulate gas-solid multiphase, Eulerian-Eulerian two-fluid model (EE-TFM) and
Eulerian-Lagrangian (EL) were largely used among researchers. The basic difference among
them is on the treatment of solid phase. Most of the gas-solid fast pyrolysis bubbling bed were
investigated using EE-TFM approach [15]. In the EE method, the gas and solid phases are
regarded as a steadily interpenetrating flow [16]. Xiong et al. [17] [18] and Xue [19] [20]
conducted CFD simulation using 2D bubbling fluidized bed reactor with EE-TFM method. Xue
et al. [20] pointed out that the 2D simulation results sufficiently able to predict the product yield
with less computational cost then 3D simulations. To date, the EE-TFM based method has been
applied to conventional fast pyrolysis of biomass, while rarely been utilized to simulate SCW
catalytic pyrolysis in bubbling fluidized bed reactor.

In spite of the many research accomplishments so far, previous studies developed fast pyrolysis
of biomass model were for non-catalytic reaction. Therefore, the originality of the present work
is to develop EE-TFM multiphase model with fast catalytic pyrolysis of SCW in bubbling
fluidized bed. A parametric study has then been conducted to study the influence of the key
pyrolysis process parameters on the product yields.

METHODOLOGY

Experimental setup
Experiments were performed in a lab-scale bubbling fluidized bed under a nitrogen atmosphere, as
shown in Figure 1 (a). The bubbling bed reactor has a height of 235 mm and inner diameter of 51
mm. In bubbling fluidised bed reactor SCW entered at the height of 35 mm and products gas leave
from the top section, shown in Figure 1 (b). Main fluidized gas was injected from the bottom of
reactor. The inlet velocity was regulated by the nitrogen gas flow rate. Silica sand as bed material
with mean particle diameter of 180 μm and a density of 2240 kg/m3. The minimum fluidizing
velocity (Umf) was determined to be 0.02 m/s. For all the experiments, the fluidization velocity
was maintained at 2.0ⅹUmf. Two differential pressure transducers were connected to the
pressure ports along the bubbling bed column wall. A solid inventory (Iv) of 0.1 kg was initially

2
0444-3

loaded into the CFB for the experimental run. The system geometry, material properties, and
flow conditions are summarized in Table 1.

Figure 1. Simulated reactor (a) schematic diagram of the of bubbling bed (b) dimension of
bubbling bed (c) computational domain of bubbling bed

Table 1. Bubbling bed reactor geometry and material properties

Description Value
System geometry:
Bubbling bed diameter, D (mm) 51
Bubbling bed height, H (mm) 235
Material properties:
Gas density, ρg (kg/m3) 1.225
Silica particle density, ρs (kg/m3) 2240
Silica particle bulk density (kg/m3) 1350
Silica particle mean particle diameter, dp (μm) 180
SCW density, ρs (kg/m3) 605
SCW bulk Density (kg/m3) 328
SCW mean particle diameter, dp (μm) 358.45

3
0444-4

CFD modelling
The developed gas-solid multiphase CFD model based on Eulerian-Eulerian TFM [21]
approach and was performed using ANSYS® Fluent (v 20.2) software. The employed set of
governing equations detailed description can be found elsewhere [22]. To accurately predict the
gas-solid flow in the CFB riser section, the partial-differential form of the granular temperature
equation was used to compute the solid phase properties [23] was adopted to consider the
interphase momentum exchange between the gas-solid phases. The specularity based on
Johnson and Jackson [24] wall boundary conditions were set to 0.0001 and 0.9, respectively.
The particle-particle restitution coefficient (ess) value was set to 0.9. Further, CFD simulation
was performed using a transient solver with a time step of 0.0003 s with 100 iterations per time
step. The phase-coupled SIMPLE scheme was employed for the pressure-velocity coupling,
and additional simulation parameters used in this work are detailed in Table 2. All simulations
were run for 15 s, and the results were employed by time averaging simulation results from the
last 10 s.

Table 2. EE-TFM parameters

Particle - particle and particle to wall interaction value:

Specularity coefficient (φ) - 0.5
Particle–particle restitution coefficient (ess) - 0.9
Packing limit (αs,max) - 0.63

Run calculation and convergence settings:

Time step (s) - 0.0003
Convergence criteria - 10−3
Maximum number of iterations per time step - 100

Discretization schemes settings:

Momentum - Second order upwind
Volume fraction - QUICK
Transient formulation - First order implicit

The computational domains used for the CFD simulation were schematically shown in Figure 1
(c). Li et al. [25] suggested that the 20-solid particle diameter is enough to ensure grid
convergence criterion for the group B particles. From a other work, we found that the mesh size
of 10- solid particle diameters helps mesh convergence criterion [26]. So, in the present study,
about 13,160 mesh for CFD with average mesh size of 5-particle diameter were selected for
gas-solid CFD simulation.

Reaction model
SCW pyrolysis process involves many reactions and sub-reactions, therefore fundamental
interpretation of these complex mechanism is still impossible. Further, coupling plenty of
chemical reactions in CFD simulation is impractical because of computational cost and
convergence issues. So, for reactor-scale CFD simulation work developer employed limited
number of reaction steps. In this study, two-stage semi-global mechanism is considered, that
were adopted by several researcher, as given Figure 2 [27]. SCW first forms tar,
non-condensable gas-1 and char-1 and in other cracking reaction tar produced from primary
reaction is further formulated into non-condensable gas-2 (NCG2) and char-2. Arrhenius based
model was considered and relevant data were given in Table 3 [28], [29], [30].

4
0444-5

Figure 2. Two-stage semi global reaction mechanism of biomass

Table 3. Biomass fast pyrolysis reaction data

Reaction Pre-exponential factor, Activation energy,

Ai (s− 1) Ei, (J/mol)
Bio-mass => NCG-1 4.38 × 109 152700
Bio-mass => Tar 1.08 × 1010 148000
Bio-mass => Char-1 3.27 × 106 111700
Tar => NCG-2 4.28 × 106 108000
Tar => Char-2 1.0 × 105 108000

MODEL VALIDATION
Before simulating the bubbling bed with reaction kinetics, hydrodynamics of gas-solid
bubbling bed from CFD model were compared against the experimental data. For increasing
superficial gas velocity the pressure drop increased and reached saturation level. Such profile
well predicted using present EE-TFM as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3. Superficial gas velocity and pressure drop profile.

(φ - 0.5, ess - 0.9)

5
0444-6

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The reaction temperature have a close relationship with the thermochemical characteristics of
pyrolysis in bubbling fluidized bed reactors. Fig. 4 presents the variation in products yield from
the bubbling fluidized bed reactor. The yield of gas (non-condensable) is increases, in bubbling
fluidized bed reactor rise in the temperature improves reaction rates and increases the
devolatilization. At elevated temperature, secondary reaction occurs thus tar converts to
non-condensable gases. The yield of tar initially increases and then decreases due to the
secondary reaction. Whereas, bio char yield continue decreases with increase in temperature.
Such product yield are in accordance with a previous study [31]. The highest bio-oil yield
observed at 460 °C. Therefore, for further influence of fluidized gas velocity, operating
temperature of 460 °C is considered.

Figure 4. CFD model prediction under various operating temperatures and product distribution.

For other important operating factor such as superficial gas velocity play key role in gas-solid
fluidized bed reactor as it influences the product yield. Figure 5 shows the tar, NCG and char
yield for different gas velocities and at fixed opetrating temperature of 460 °C. At very low
velocity, fluidization is not vigorous therefore not shown here. With the increase of gas
velocity, the yield of tar decreases, but the NCG yield increases. This is phenomena takes place
due to increased gas velocity promote the secondary reactions and improve the solid mixing
and heat transfer. Similar profile have been observed in the literature [26]. Also it can be notice
that for flow rate of less than the minimum fluidization the tar yield is minimum. After the
minimum fluidization, the tar products improve at upper rate and almost reach plutum. So, it is
suggested to conduct gas-solid bubbling bed just above minimum fluidization condition for the
economic benefit, because at higher gas velocity difference is insignificant in tar yield.

6
0444-7

Figure 5. CFD model prediction under various superficial gas velocity and product distribution.

CONCLUSION
CFD model was developed to investigate fast pyrolysis of SCW in a lab-scale gas-solid bubbling
bed reactor. Multiphase TFM approach is selected to simulate the hydrodynamics and two-stage
semi global reaction mechanism were coupled to account SCW pyrolysis. In the present work,
number of simulations were carried out to observe the effect of operating. CFD work showed that
the gas velocity and operating temperature were most important operating parameter, while only
has small effect on the product yield. This work also highlights that the CFD model can predict the
tar, NCG and char product yield for different operating temperature. From CFD study the
optimum operating temperature, gas velocity, particle inventory was determined. Present work
shows the EE-TFM capabilities to predict the performance and provide the optimization solution..

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the Korea Institute of Energy Technology Evaluation and Planning
(KETEP) granted financial resource from the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy, Republic of
Korea (No. 20183010032380).

NOMENCLATURE

Abbreviation
2D, 3D two-dimensional, three-dimensional

CFD computational fluid dynamics

KTGF kinetic theory of granular flows

SIMPLE semi-implicit method for pressure-linked equations

TFM two-fluid model

7
0444-8

REFERENCES
1. Ly H.V., Kim S.-S., Woo H.C., Choi J.H., Suh D.J. and Kim J., Fast pyrolysis of macroalga
Saccharina japonica in a bubbling fluidized-bed reactor for bio-oil production, Energy, Vol. 93,
1436-1446, 2015.
2. Lu Q., Li W.Z. and X.F. Zhu, Overview of fuel properties of biomass fast pyrolysis oils,
Energy convers. Manag., Vol 50 pp 1376-1383, 2009.
3. Mullen C. A., Boateng A. A., Goldberg N. M., Lima I. M., Laird D. A. and Hicks K. B., Biooil
and bio-char production from corn cobs and stover by fast pyrolysis, Biomass Bioenerg. Vol
34, pp 67-74, 2010.
4. Kim S.-S., Shenoy A. and Agblevor F., Themogravimetric and kinetic study of Pinyon pine in
the various gases, Bioresour. Technol. 156, pp 297-302, 2014.
5. Ly H.V., Lim D.-H., Sim J.W., Kim S.-S. and Kim J., Catalytic pyrolysis of tulip tree
(Liriodendron) in bubbling fluidized-bed reactor for upgrading bio-oil using dolomite catalyst,
Energy, Vol 162, pp 564-575, 2018.
6. Griffin M. B., Iisa K., Wang H., Dutta A., Orton K. A., French R. J., Santosa D. M., Wilson N.,
Christensen E., Nash C., Van Allsburg K. M., Baddour F. G., Ruddy D. A., Tan E. C. D., Cai
H., Mukarakate C. and Schaidle J. A., Driving towards cost-competitive biofuels
throughcatalytic fast pyrolysis by rethinking catalyst selection and reactor configuration,
Energy Environ. Sci., Vol 11, pp 2904–2918, 2018.
7. Fischer A., Du S., Valla J.A. and Bollas G.M., The effect of temperature, heating rate, and
ZSM-5 catalyst on the product selectivity of the fast pyrolysis of spent coffee grounds, RSC
Adv. Vol 5, pp 29252-29261, 2015.
Ngo T.-A., Kim J. and Kim S.-S., Fast pyrolysis of spent coffee waste and oak wood chips in a
micro-tubular reactor, Energ. Source Part A, Vol 37, pp 1186-1194, 2015.
8. Bok J.P., Choi H.S., Choi Y.S., Park H.C. and Kim S.J., Fast pyrolysis of coffee grounds:
Characteristics of product yields and biocrude oil quality, Energy, Vol 47, pp 17-24, 2012
9. Vardon D.R., Moser B.R., Zheng W., Complete utilization of spent coffee grounds to produce
biodiesel, bio-oil, and biochar, ACS Sustainable Chem. Eng. Vol 1, pp 1286−1294, 2013.
10. Bruchmuller J., Wachem B.G.M. van, Gu S. , Luo K.H., Brown R.C., Modeling the
thermochemical degradation of biomass inside a fast pyrolysis fluidized bed reactor, AIChE
J., Vol 58, pp 3030-3042, 2012.
11. Lee J.E., Park H.C. and Choi H.S., Numerical study on fast pyrolysis of Lignocellulosic
biomass with varying column size of bubbling fluidized bed, ACS Sustain. Chem. Eng., pp
2196-2204, 2017.
12. Upadhyay M., Park H.C., Hwang J.G., Choi H.S., Jang H.N. and Seo Y.C., Computational
particle-fluid dynamics simulation of gas-solid flow in a circulating fluidized bed with air or
O2/CO2 as fluidizing gas, Powder Technol., Vol 318, pp 350-362, 2017.
13. Xiong Q. and Kong S.C., High-resolution particle-scale simulation of biomass pyrolysis, ACS
Sustain. Chem. Eng., Vol. 4, 5456-5461, 2016.
14. Q. Lu, W.Z. Li, X.F. ZhuOverview of fuel properties of biomass fast pyrolysis oils Energy
convers. Manag., 50 (2009), pp. 1376-1383.
15. Continuum theory of solid–fluid mixture—a super imposed model of equipresent constituents,
G. Ahmadi and M. Farshad, Indian J. Technol., 12 (1974), pp. 195-198
16. Xiong Q., Kong S. and Passalacqua A., Development of a generalized numerical framework
for simulating biomass fast pyrolysis in fluidized-bed reactors, Chem. Eng. Sci., Vol 99, pp
305-313, 2013.
17. Xiong Q., Aramideh S. and Kong S.C., Modeling effects of operating conditions on biomass
fast pyrolysis in bubbling fluidized bed reactors, Energy Fuels, Vol 27, pp 5948-5956, 2013.

8
0444-9

18. Xue Q., Heindel T.J., and Fox R.O., A CFD model for biomass fast pyrolysis in fluidized-bed
reactors, Chem. Eng. Sci., Vol. 66, pp 2440-2452, 2011.
19. Xue Q., Dalluge D., Heindel T.J., Fox R.O., and Brown R.C., Experimental validation and
CFD modeling study of biomass fast pyrolysis in fluidized-bed reactors, Fuel, Vol. 97, pp
757-769, 2012.
20. Anderson T.B., and R. Jackson, A fluid mechanical description of fluidized beds, Ind. Eng.
Chem. Fundam., Vol. 6, pp 527-539, 1967.
21. Upadhyay M., and Park J.H., CFD simulation via conventional two-fluid model of a
circulating fluidized bed riser: influence of models and model parameters on hydrodynamic
behavior, Powder Technol., Vol. 272, pp 260-268, 2015.
22. Upadhyay M., Kim A., Kim H., Lim D., Lim H., An Assessment of Drag Models in
Eulerian–Eulerian CFD Simulation of Gas–Solid Flow Hydrodynamics in Circulating
Fluidized Bed Riser, ChemEngineering, Vol. 4. Pp 37-56, 2020.
23. Johnson P.C. and Jackson R., Frictional–collisional constitutive relations for granular
materials, with application to plane shearing, J. Fluid Mech., Vol. 176, pp 67-93, 1987.
24. Li T., Gel A., Pennala S., Shahnam M., Syamlal M., CFD simulations of circulating fluidized
bed risers, part I: grid study, Powder Technol., Vol. 254, pp 170-180, 2014.
25. Andrews A.T., Loezos P. N. and Sundaresan S., Coarse-grid simulation of gas-particle flows
in vertical risers, Ind. Eng. Chem. Res., Vol. 44, pp 6022-6037, 2005.
26. Choi H.S., Choi Y.S. and Kim S.J., Numerical study of fast pyrolysis of woody biomass in a
gravity‐driven reactor, Environ. Prog. Sustain. Energy, Vol. 28, pp 418-426, 2009.
27. Park W.C., Atreya A., Baum H.R., Experimental and theoretical investigation of heat and
mass transfer processes during wood pyrolysis, Combust. Flame, Vol. 157, pp 481-494, 2010.
28. Xiong Q., Aramideh S., Passalacqua A., Kong S.C., BIOTC: an open-source CFD code for
simulating biomass fast pyrolysis, Comput. Phys. Commun., Vol. 185, pp 1739-1746, 2014.
29. Xiong Q., Kong S.C., Passalacqua A., Development of a generalized numerical framework for
simulating biomass fast pyrolysis in fluidized-bed reactors, Chem. Eng. Sci., Vol. 99, pp
305-313, 2013.
30. Salehi E., Abedi J. and Harding T., Bio-oil from Sawdust: effect of operating parameters on
the yield and quality of pyrolysis products, Energy Fuels, Vol. 25, pp 4145-4154, 2011.