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Investigation of Void Fraction Schemes for Use with CFD-DEM Simulations of Fluidized Beds

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

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Authors

Clarke, DA 
Sederman, AJ 
Gladden, LF 

Abstract

© 2018 American Chemical Society. This paper investigates the spatial resolution of computational fluid dynamics-discrete element method (CFD-DEM) simulations of a bubbling fluidized bed for seven different void fraction schemes. Fluid grids with cell sizes of 3.5, 1.6, and 1.3 particle diameters were compared. The particle velocity maps from all of the void fraction schemes were in good qualitative agreement with the experimental data collected using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Refining the fluid grid improved the quantitative agreement due to a more accurate representation of flow near the gas distributor. The approach proposed by Khawaja et al. [ J. Comput. Multiphase Flows 2012, 4, 183-192 ] provided the closest match to the exact void fraction though only the particle centered method differed significantly. These results indicate that the fluid grid used for CFD-DEM simulations must be sufficiently fine to represent the inlet flow realistically and that a void fraction scheme such as that proposed by Khawaja be used.

Description

Keywords

4004 Chemical Engineering, 40 Engineering

Journal Title

Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0888-5885
1520-5045

Volume Title

57

Publisher

American Chemical Society (ACS)