A coupled combustion and hydrodynamic model for the prediction of waterwall tube overheating of supercritical boiler

•Developed a coupled model integrating the 3D gas and 1D steam flows of boiler.•Incorporated the effects of both gas and steam flows of boiler on tube temperature.•Resolved steam maldistribution caused by tube structure and uneven heat flux. Tube overheating is the leading cause of boiler tube failures that had led to tremendous replacement and maintenance costs. Boiler tube temperature is simultaneously affected by the heating effect of hot combustion gas in the furnace and the cooling effect of steam flow in boiler tubes. Thus, prediction of tube temperature needs to include the simulations of both the gas and steam flows of the boiler in the model. To compromise the significant scale difference between the boiler furnace and tubes, a coupled model that integrates a three-dimensional (3D) CFD model describing the gas flow and combustion processes in the furnace with a one-dimensional (1D) hydrodynamic model describing the steam flow in the boiler waterwall tubes was developed in this paper. The 3D CFD and 1D hydrodynamic models are coupled by iterative data exchange of boiler heat flux and steam temperature between the two models. In this way, this coupled model can incorporate all the key parameters that strongly affect the waterwall tube temperature, including the distributions of boiler heat flux, steam temperature and the convective heat transfer coefficient of steam flow in boiler tubes. In particular, the critical effects of steam maldistribution caused by both the structure of tube network system and uneven heat absorption of parallel tubes on tube temperature can be resolved by this model. This coupled model provides the capability to predict the detailed distribution of waterwall tube temperature and locate the areas of tube overheating under different boiler operating parameters. This coupled model was employed to predict the tube temperature distribution of the spiral waterwall of a 350 MW supercritical boiler. The predicted results show that the areas having higher risk of tube overheating are located near the outlet of spiral waterwall tubes where the steam temperature is the highest and on the wall areas where the local wall heat flux is the highest. The results strengthen the necessity of incorporating both the gas and steam sides of boiler into the model for accurate prediction of waterwall tube temperature.