Segregation characteristics of irregular binaries in gas solid fluidized beds——An ANN-approach

Binary mixtures of irregular materials of different particle sizes and/or particle densities are fluidized in a 15-cm diameter column with a perforated plate distributor. An attempt has been made in this work to determine the segregation characteristics of jetsam particles for both the homogeneous and heterogeneous binary mixtures in terms of segregation distance by correlating it to the various system parameters, viz. initial static bed height, height of a layer of particles above the bottom grid, superficial gas velocity and average particle size and/or particle densities of the mixture through the dimensional analysis. Correlation on the basis of Artificial Neural Network approach has also been developed with the above system parameters thereby authenticating the development of correlation by the former approach. The calculated values of the segregation distance obtained for both the homogeneous and heterogeneous binary mixtures from both the types of fluidized beds (i. e. under the static bed condition and the fluidized bed condition) have also been compared with each other.     

Parallelization of pseudo-particle modeling and its application in simulating gas–solid fluidization

Pseudo-Particle Modeling (PPM) is a particle method proposed by Ge and Li in 1996 [Ge, W., & Li, J. (1996). Pseudo-particle approach to hydrodynamics of particle–fluid systems. In M. Kwauk & J. Li (Eds.), Proceedings of the 5th international conference on circulating fluidized bed (pp. 260–265). Beijing: Science Press] and has been used to explore the microscopic mechanism in complex particle–fluid systems. But as a particle method, high computational cost remains a main obstacle for its large-scale application; therefore, parallel implementation of this method is highly desirable. Parallelization of two-dimensional PPM was carried out by spatial decomposition in this paper. The time costs of the major functions in the program were analyzed and the program was then optimized for higher efficiency by dynamic load balancing and resetting of particle arrays. Finally, simulation on a gas–solid fluidized bed with 102,400 solid particles and 1.8 × 10⁷ pseudo-particles was performed successfully with this code, indicating its scalability in future applications.     

Numerical simulation and experimental validation of gas–solid flow in the riser of a dense fluidized bed reactor

Gas–solid flow in the riser of a dense fluidized bed using Geldart B particles (sand), at high gas velocity (7.6–15.5 m/s) and with comparatively high solid flux (140–333.8 kg/m² s), was investigated experimentally and simulated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD), both two- and three-dimensional and using the Gidaspow, O’Brien-Syamlal, Koch-Hill-Ladd and EMMS drag models. The results predicted by EMMS drag model showed the best agreement with experimental results. Calculated axial solids hold-up profiles, in particular, are well consistent with experimental data. The flow structure in the riser was well represented by the CFD results, which also indicated the cause of cluster formation. Complex hydrodynamical behaviors of particle cluster were observed. The relative motion between gas and solid phases and axial heterogeneity in the three subzones of the riser were also investigated, and were found to be consistent with predicted flow structure. The model could well depict the difference between the two exit configurations used, viz., semi-bend smooth exit and T-shaped abrupt exit. The numerical results indicate that the proposed EMMS method gives better agreement with the experimental results as compared with the Gidaspow, O’Brien-Syamlal, Koch-Hill-Ladd models. As a result, the proposed drag force model can be used as an efficient approach for the dense gas–solid two-phase flow.     

Quantitative measurement of solids distribution in gas–solid riser flows using electrical impedance tomography and gamma densitometry tomography

An electrical impedance tomography (EIT) system has been developed to non-invasively measure particle distributions in the riser of a pilot-scale circulating fluidized bed (CFB). Although EIT systems have often been applied to yield qualitative information about gas–solid flows, the present EIT system yields quantitative information that is validated by comparison to a gamma densitometry tomography (GDT) system. EIT and GDT were applied to the CFB riser (14-cm inner diameter, 5.77-m height) containing fluid catalytic cracking particles in air. The flows examined were annular with a dilute core and had average and near-wall solids volume fractions up to 0.25 and 0.66, respectively. For all cases, the average and near-wall solids volume fractions from EIT and GDT agreed to within 0.03 and 0.07, respectively. This good agreement suggests that, where feasible, EIT can be used in place of GDT, which is advantageous since EIT systems are often safer, less expensive, and faster than GDT systems.