CFD simulation of flow regime maps in a slot‐rectangular spouted bed

Abstract

The recognition of flow regimes is very important in the application of spouted beds. In this paper, two‐dimensional computer simulations of a slot‐rectangular spouted bed using FLUENT commercial software were utilised to construct flow regime maps. Two‐phase gas–solid flows in the bed were simulated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD) using the two‐phase Eulerian–Eulerian granular model. The numerical simulations were applied to predict different flow regimes. The constructed flow regime map for a bed containing solid particles with a diameter of 1.44 mm was in good agreement with the experimental map previously reported elsewhere. With this successful numerical mapping, a flow regime map for particles with a diameter of 3.77 mm was constructed for various superficial gas velocities and static bed heights. The map was composed of six distinct flow patterns, that is fixed bed, internal jet, jet‐in‐fluidised‐bed, spouting, incoherent spouting and slugging. The slugging flow regime occurred at large values for the static bed height and air inlet velocity, while the spouting regime arose by increasing the air inlet velocity at low values of static bed height. Unlike the spouting regime, large pressure drop fluctuations were observed in the incoherent spouting regime.

CFD gas–liquid simulation of oriented valve tray

“…Therefore, computational fluid dynamic (CFD) with advantages of simplicity, accuracy and efficiency, has become attractive in the research of many separation processes, such as distillation, absorption, crystallization etc. [3][4][5].…”

Modelling of Spouted and Spout-Fluid Beds: Key for Their Successful Scale Up

“…After the validation of their model, using particles with diameter 1.44 mm, Tabatabaei and colleagues [221] employed it to obtain the complete regime map of a slot-rectangular spouted bed containing particles of diameter 3.77 mm; the momentum exchange between the solid and gas phases was calculated through a drag law they previously developed [238], which is a modification of the Di Felice [162] drag law. Jin and others [207,214] simulated the fluid dynamics of a spouted bed used as food Microwave Vacuum Dryer, obtaining that both the jet penetration depth and the pressure drop have an almost linear dependence on the spouting velocity.…”

“…Number of Occurrences References k-ε 18 [90,92,203,204,206,209,211,212,[215][216][217][218][223][224][225][226][227][230][231][232],236] None or not specified 16 [25,89,91,202,203,205,207,208,210,213,214,[220][221][222]228,229] Riera and co-workers [217] simulated a multi-phase spouted column to test the validity of three turbulence models: the k-ε model, the k-ω model [240] and the SST model [241]. They observed that the k-ε and k-ω models yielded similar results for an air-water mixture, while the SST model was the most adequate for the air-water-sand mixture.…”