In biomass processing fluidized beds are used to process granular materials where particles typically possess elongated shapes. However, for simplicity, in computer simulations particles are often considered spherical, even though elongated particles experience more complex particle–particle interactions as well as different hydrodynamic forces. The exact effect of these more complex interactions in dense fluidized suspensions is still not well understood. In this study we use the magnetic particle tracking technique to compare the fluidization behavior of spherical particles to that of elongated particles. We found a considerable difference between fluidization behavior of spherical versus elongated particles in the time-averaged particle velocity field as well as in the time-averaged particle rotational velocity profile. Moreover, we studied the effect of fluid velocity and the particle's aspect ratio on the particle's preferred orientation in different parts of the bed, which provides new insight in the fluidization behavior of elongated particles.@en

We investigate the collision behaviour of a shear thinning non-Newtonian fluid xanthan, by binary droplet collision experiments. Droplet collisions of non-Newtonian fluids are more complex than their Newtonian counterpart as the viscosity no longer remains constant during the collision process. Despite the complex collision dynamics, we are able to present a complete regime map based on non-dimensional Weber (We) number and impact parameter (B). We compare the collision outcomes of xanthan, glycerol and a milk concentrate at similar impact conditions. These experiments reveal very rich and complex collision morphologies for shear thinning xanthan solution, strikingly different from Newtonian droplet collisions. Unlike glycerol and milk, xanthan collisions show no reflexive separation even at very high We number. Instead of breakup, we observe disc-like shapes with an oscillating behaviour of the colliding droplets. A detailed analysis reveals that this outcome is related to increased viscous energy dissipation and extensional effects.@en

The bubble characteristics in a 3-D cylindrical fluidized bed have been investigated both experimentally and numerically. Experiments were performed on a 0.1 m diameter fluidized bed, with alumina oxide particles (diameter ~1 mm) as a fluidizing material. Measurements were done at a spatial resolution of 1 mm and a temporal resolution of 1000 cross-sectional images per second, using an ultrafast electron beam X-ray computed tomography (XRT) setup (Fischer and Hampel 2010). A two-fluid model using kinetic theory of granular flow (Verma et al., 2013) was used to predict the bed dynamics numerically. The equivalent bubble diameter as a function of height is in close agreement with Darton et al. (1977) and Werther (1975) correlations. The bubble size distribution predicted from simulations is broader compared to experiments. Both the bubble rise velocity and the bubble size increase with increase in excess gas velocity. The experimental measurements and simulation predictions are in fair agreement with the Hilligardt and Werther (1986) correlation.@en

A parallel and scalable stochastic Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method applied to large-scale dense bubbly flows is reported in this paper. The DSMC method is applied to speed up the bubble-bubble collision handling relative to the Discrete Bubble Model proposed by Darmana et al. (2006) [1]. The DSMC algorithm has been modified and extended to account for bubble-bubble interactions arising due to uncorrelated and correlated bubble velocities. The algorithm is fully coupled with an in-house CFD code and parallelized using the MPI framework. The model is verified and validated on multiple cores with different test cases, ranging from impinging particle streams to laboratory-scale bubble columns. The parallel performance is shown using two different large scale systems: with an uniform and a non-uniform distribution of bubbles. The hydrodynamics of a pilot-scale bubble column is analyzed and the effect of the column scale is reported via the comparison of bubble columns at three different scales.@en

A complete knowledge of the effect of droplet viscosity on droplet-droplet collision outcomes is essential for industrial processes such as spray drying. When droplets with dispersed solids are dried, the apparent viscosity of the dispersed phase increases by many orders of magnitude, which drastically changes the outcome of a droplet-droplet collision. However, the effect of viscosity on the droplet collision regime boundaries demarcating coalescence and reflexive and stretching separation is still not entirely understood and a general model for collision outcome boundaries is not available. In this work, the effect of viscosity on the droplet-droplet collision outcome is studied using direct numerical simulations employing the volume of fluid method. The role of viscous energy dissipation is analysed in collisions of droplets with different sizes and different physical properties. From the simulations results, a general phenomenological model depending on the capillary number (Ca, accounting for viscosity), the impact parameter (B), the Weber number (We), and the size ratio (Δ) is proposed.@en

In this paper, an accurate and stable sharp interface immersed boundary method(IBM) is presented for the direct numerical simulation of particle laden flows. The current IBM method is based on the direct-forcing method by incorporating the ghost-cell approach implicitly. An important feature of this IBM is the sharp representation of the solid surface, contrary to other variants of IBM for freely moving particles in which the solid surface is diffuse. Moreover, a correction of the diameter is not necessary for obtaining accurate results. The current ghost-cell IBM is stable because spurious oscillations incurred due to discontinuity in the pressure and velocity field in moving particle simulations is avoided. An algorithm for accurate torque computation is developed. The proposed algorithm is verified by comparison to an analytical expression and is shown to give a substantial improvement over the existing method. Finally, the present IBM is validated for various test cases of single and multi-particle systems and is shown to be accurate and robust for a wide range of flow conditions.@en

Hypothesis Multiphase flow through porous media is important in a number of industrial, natural and biological processes. One application is enhanced oil recovery (EOR), where a resident oil phase is displaced by a Newtonian or polymeric fluid. In EOR, the two-phase immiscible displacement through heterogonous porous media is usually governed by competing viscous and capillary forces, expressed through a Capillary number Ca, and viscosity ratio of the displacing and displaced fluid. However, when viscoelastic displacement fluids are used, elastic forces in the displacement fluid also become significant. It is hypothesized that elastic instabilities are responsible for enhanced oil recovery through an elastic microsweep mechanism. Experiments In this work, we use a simplified geometry in the form of a pillared microchannel. We analyze the trapped residual oil size distribution after displacement by a Newtonian fluid, a nearly inelastic shear thinning fluid, and viscoelastic polymers and surfactant solutions. Findings We find that viscoelastic polymers and surfactant solutions can displace more oil compared to Newtonian fluids and nearly inelastic shear thinning polymers at similar Ca numbers. Beyond a critical Ca number, the size of residual oil blobs decreases significantly for viscoelastic fluids. This critical Ca number directly corresponds to flow rates where elastic instabilities occur in single phase flow, suggesting a close link between enhancement of oil recovery and appearance of elastic instabilities.@en

In this experimental study the segregation behavior for fluidized mixtures of spherical and cylindrical particles is investigated. In industry, fluidization of particles featuring a wide range of shapes is common in various applications such as biomass gasification, drying applications, food processing and production of pharmaceuticals. Earlier publications have mainly focused on segregation of spherical particles of different volume or density. The particles used in this study have equal volume and density but a different shape. The main purpose of this work is to study de-mixing driven by particle shape. To analyze the particle distributions inside the fluidized bed, a Digital Image Analysis (DIA) technique has been developed, capable of capturing the particle positions and orientations within the bed over time. The experiments show that in the non-bubbling flow regime (at low fluidization velocities) rod-shaped particles may segregate, sinking to the bottom of the bed. In the bubbling flow regime (at higher fluidization velocities) segregation does not occur, because of bubble-induced mixing. Here strong alignment of the cylindrical particle's long axis with the flow is observed. The experimental results obtained give qualitative and quantitative insight in the behavior of non-spherical particles in fluidized beds and can be used for validation of numerical models concerning non-spherical particle mixing.@en

Particle based approaches are one of the recent modeling techniques to overcome the computational limitation in multiscale modeling of complex processes, for example a heterogeneous catalytic reactor. We propose an efficient model for a chemical reactor where hydrodynamics of the solvent is determined by Stochastic Rotation Dynamics and a reaction occurs over a catalytic surface where the reaction kinetics follows the mean-field assumption. We highlight the modeling techniques required to simulate such a system and then validate the model for its separate and combined components of convection, diffusion and reaction(s). A dimensionless analysis helps compare processes occurring at different scales. We determine the Reynolds number, Re, and the Damkohler numbers, Da and DaL in terms of key quantities. The approach is then used to analyse a reaction (a) following the Langmuir-Hinshelwood kinetics, (b) generating product particles with different self-diffusivity values as compared to the reactant particles. The model developed can further incorporate reactions occurring inside complex geometries (pore diffusion) and also be used to study complex reaction systems for which the mean-field assumption is no longer valid.@en

In this work we investigate droplet-droplet collision interactions in a spray system using an Eulerian-Lagrangian model with subgrid turbulence dispersion. The effect of different droplet viscosities on the type and frequency of droplet collision is investigated, knowledge of which is essential for industrial processes such as spray drying for production of milk powder. The dispersed phase is treated with Lagrangian transport of droplets and the turbulent self-induced gas flow using large eddy simulation (LES). A stochastic Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method is used to detect collisions between droplets. The outcome of a binary collision is described by a collision boundary models for water and milk concentrates. A turbulence dispersion model, based on the Langevin equation, accounts for the stochastic subgrid fluid velocity fluctuations along the droplet trajectory. We compare the spray dynamics with and without droplet interactions and turbulence dispersion. For a spray with typical droplet size of 50 µm, we find that the turbulence dispersion model enhances the total collision frequencies by approximately 25%. The performance of the turbulent dispersion model is tested by investigating the rate of collisions for different milk concentrates. The evolution of size distributions inside the spray is strongly influenced by the complementary effects of collision boundary models and turbulence dispersion.@en

Accurate direct numerical simulations are performed to determine the drag, lift and torque coefficients of non-spherical particles. The numerical simulations are performed using the lattice Boltzmann method with multi-relaxation time. The motivation for this work is the need for accurate drag, lift and torque correlations for high Re regimes, which are encountered in Euler-Lagrangian simulations of fluidization and pneumatic conveying of larger non-spherical particles. The simulations are performed in the Reynolds number range 0.1 ≤ Re ≤ 2000 for different incident angles ϕ. Different tests are performed to analyse the influence of grid resolution and confinement effects for different Re. The measured drag, lift and torque coefficients are utilized to derive accurate correlations for specific non-spherical particle shapes, which can be used in unresolved simulations. The functional forms for the correlations are chosen to agree with the expected physics at Stokes flow as well as the observed leveling off of the drag coefficient at high Re flows. Therefore the fits can be extended to regimes outside the Re regimes simulated. We observe sine-squared scaling of the drag coefficient for the particles tested even at Re=2000 with CD,ϕ=CD,ϕ=0∘ +(CD,ϕ=90∘ −CD,ϕ=0∘ )sin2ϕ. Furthermore, we also observe that the lift coefficient approximately scales as CL,ϕ=(CD,ϕ=90∘ −CD,ϕ=0∘ )sinϕcosϕ for the elongated particles. The current work would greatly improve the accuracy of Euler-Lagrangian simulations of larger non-spherical particles considering the existing literature is mainly limited to steady flow regimes and lower Re.@en

Large scale simulation models can aid in improving the design of spray dryers. In this work an Eulerian-Lagrangian model with coupled gas phase and droplet heat and mass transfer balances is used to study airflow dynamics, temperature and humidity profiles at different positions in the spray. The turbulent gas flow is solved using large eddy simulation (LES). A turbulent dispersion model accounts for the stochastic subgrid fluid velocity fluctuations along the droplet trajectory. The dispersed phase is treated with Lagrangian transport of droplets, and collisions between droplets which are detected with a stochastic Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) method. The outcome of a binary collision is described by collision boundary models for water and milk concentrates. The drying of droplets is modeled by the reaction engineering approach (REA). The effect of the inlet air conditions and of droplet viscosity on the temperature and humidity distributions are analyzed. Most of the heat and mass transfer occurs in the first 10-20 cm from the nozzle where the slip velocities and temperature and humidity driving forces are higher. The droplets size increases, both in the axial and radial direction, because of the dominance of coalescence over separation in the droplet spray studied here. Because the spray domain considered in this work is relatively small, the droplet residence time is small, and consequently the amount of evaporation is still low. The droplet size distributions of milk concentrates are affected by the predominance of coalescence over separation events. The coalescence dominated regime increases when the droplet viscosity is higher.@en

In this work, we perform simulations of particle laden flow in a wide and long narrow channel in a Newtonian fluid. Simulations are performed for mono-sized and equal density spheres with varying Archimedes and Reynolds number. In the simulations, different phases of particle transport - rolling, saltation and suspension are observed. During simulations the average bed height is monitored and its steady state value is used for proposing a correlation between solids volume fraction (ϕ), shear Reynolds number (Res) and Archimedes number (Ar). This correlation is used to predict the critical shear Reynolds number for particle lift-off and a condition at which particles would occupy the whole channel at a given Archimedes number. The value of this critical Reynolds number is compared with the critical Reynolds number for single particle lift-off.@en

Bubble characteristics in a three-dimension gas-fluidized bed (FB) have been measured using noninvasive ultrafast electron beam X-ray tomography. The measurements are compared with predictions by a two-fluid model (TFM) based on kinetic theory of granular flow. The effect of bed material (glass, alumina, and low linear density polyethylene (LLDPE), dp ~1 mm), inlet gas velocity, and initial particle bed height on the bubble behavior is investigated in a cylindrical column of 0.1-m diameter. The bubble rise velocity is determined by cross correlation of images from dual horizontal planes. The bubble characteristics depend highly upon the particle collisional properties. The bubble sizes obtained from experiments and simulations show good agreement. The LLDPE particles show high gas hold-up and higher bubble rise velocity than predicted on basis of literature correlations. The bed expansion is relatively high for LLDPE particles. The X-ray tomography and TFM results provide in-depth understanding of bubble behavior in FBs containing different granular material types.@en

Bubble characteristics in a three-dimension gas-fluidized bed (FB) have been measured using noninvasive ultrafast electron beam X-ray tomography. The measurements are compared with predictions by a two-fluid model (TFM) based on kinetic theory of granular flow. The effect of bed material (glass, alumina, and low linear density polyethylene (LLDPE), dp ~1 mm), inlet gas velocity, and initial particle bed height on the bubble behavior is investigated in a cylindrical column of 0.1-m diameter. The bubble rise velocity is determined by cross correlation of images from dual horizontal planes. The bubble characteristics depend highly upon the particle collisional properties. The bubble sizes obtained from experiments and simulations show good agreement. The LLDPE particles show high gas hold-up and higher bubble rise velocity than predicted on basis of literature correlations. The bed expansion is relatively high for LLDPE particles. The X-ray tomography and TFM results provide in-depth understanding of bubble behavior in FBs containing different granular material types.@en

We numerically study the impact of a large sphere dropping into a prefluidized granular bed using a state-of-the-art hybrid discrete particle and immersed boundary (DP-IB) method. For the first time, both the gas-induced drag force and the contact force exerted on the intruder are investigated separately. Our results show that even for relatively large granular particles of 0.5. mm diameter, namely Geldart B particles, and an intruder of 1. cm, the drag exerted by the interstitial gas accounts for up to 5% of the total force experienced by the intruder. Our simulation results match well with existing experimental observations. This work shows that the current simulation scheme could become a tool to investigate the effect of interstitial gas on the dynamics of projectile impact cratering. More generally, the method allows for accurate simulation of the hydrodynamic effects of large internal objects moving through (pre-)fluidized granular beds.@en

We numerically study the impact of a large sphere dropping into a prefluidized granular bed using a state-of-the-art hybrid discrete particle and immersed boundary (DP-IB) method. For the first time, both the gas-induced drag force and the contact force exerted on the intruder are investigated separately. Our results show that even for relatively large granular particles of 0.5. mm diameter, namely Geldart B particles, and an intruder of 1. cm, the drag exerted by the interstitial gas accounts for up to 5% of the total force experienced by the intruder. Our simulation results match well with existing experimental observations. This work shows that the current simulation scheme could become a tool to investigate the effect of interstitial gas on the dynamics of projectile impact cratering. More generally, the method allows for accurate simulation of the hydrodynamic effects of large internal objects moving through (pre-)fluidized granular beds.@en

The effect of normal restitution coefficient and friction coefficient on the hydrodynamics of a dense bubbling solid-gas fluidized bed is investigated using a two fluid model (TFM) based on our kinetic theory of granular flow (KTGF) for rotating frictional particles. A comparison between TFM simulations using the present KTGF model, and a simpler KTGF model for rapid flows of slightly frictional, nearly elastic spheres derived by Jenkins and Zhang [1], is carried out. The simulation results reveal that both the coefficient of normal restitution and friction coefficient play an important role in the homogeneity of the bubbling bed. The particle friction has a strong effect on the solids flow patterns and distribution, while the normal restitution coefficient has a relatively small effect on both. The present model also predicts a larger amount of energy dissipation caused by the inclusion of particle friction. The present KTGF model leads to better agreement with detailed discrete particle model (DPM) simulation results for the axial particle velocity profiles and solids volume fraction distribution@en