Study of rod-like particles in fluidized bed by numerical and experimental investigations

Abstract

Non-spherical particles are often encountered in fluidized process equipment. Particle shape can significantly affect the hydrodynamics in fluidized beds. However, most of these studies focus on spherical particles while in reality, the constituent particles are seldom spherical. A coupled computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element method (DEM) approach has been extensively applied in recent years to study these flows at the particle scale. The drag force acting on a non-spherical particle can vary considerably with particle shape, orientation of the particle, Reynolds number and packing fraction. In this work, a CFD-DEM approach has been extended to model a lab scale quasi-2D fluidized bed of rod-like particles. These particles can be classified as Geldart D particles and have an aspect ratio of 4. Simulation results for the pressure drop, bed height and solid circulation patterns are compared with results from experiment. Particle velocity and orientations is studied, which provides interesting insight regarding behavior based on particle shape. Thus the capability of the CFD-DEM approach to efficiently account for global bed dynamics in fluidized bed of rod-like particle is demonstrated.