CFD investigation of slugging behavior in a gas-solids fluidized bed

Abstract

The hydrodynamics of a slugging fluidized bed is investigated numerically by using a two-fluid model suggested by Brandani and Zhang [22]. Numerical simulations are carried out in the platform of a commercial software package, CFX 4.4, by adding user-defined subroutines. The bed expansion ratio, the pressure drop fluctuation and its power spectrum density at the equipment scale and the solids volume fraction distributions at the grid scale are predicted to explore the slugging fluidization characteristics for Geldart group D particles. By comparing with the experimental data in the literature, the numerical model is found to have better predictive ability when the viscous force term is considered in the gas phase momentum equation.