Abstract

In this work, the business Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is used for the numerical simulations of an air-solid fluidized bed container in the solid phase involving a multi-fluid Eulerian multiphase model and the Kinetic Theory of Granular Flow (KTGF). The height of the fluidized bed setup is 1.5 m while its diameter is 0.2 m. With it, a series of experimentations were obtained using Helium tracer to determine the Residence Time Distribution (RTD) at various normalized velocities, that is, mixing of air-solids at different degrees. 2 and 3 dimensions of the fluidized bed container are simulated. The main purpose of this study is to understand the hydrodynamic behavior of air-solid fluidized bed container through a framework of Eulerian multiphase model and to analyze the hydrodynamic behavior of the air-solids mixing. As a first approach, the CFD model is validated using the experimental results of the residence time study. The numerical results of RTD corresponded well with the experimental findings. This shows that the CFD modeling might be used to indicate the performance of a fluidized bed reactor.

Key words: Computational fluid dynamics, fluidized bed, residence time distribution (RTD), gas-solids mixing, turbulence.