a b s t r a c tThis work compares simulation and experimental results of the hydrodynamics of a two dimensional, bubbling air fluidized bed. The simulation in this study has been conducted using an Eulerian Eulerian two fluid approach based on two different and well known closure models for the gas particle interaction: the drag models due to Gidaspow and Syamlal & O'Brien. The experimental results have been obtained by means of Digital Image Analysis (DIA) and Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) techniques applied on a real bubbling fluidized bed of 0.005 m thickness to ensure its two dimensional behaviour. Several results have been obtained in this work from both simulation and experiments and mutually compared. Previous studies in literature devoted to the comparison between two fluid models and experiments are usually focused on bubble behaviour (i.e. bubble velocity and diameter) and dense phase distribution. However, the present work examines and compares not only the bubble hydrodynamics and dense phase probability within the bed, but also the time averaged vertical and horizontal component of the dense phase velocity, the air throughflow and the instantaneous interaction between bubbles and dense phase. Besides, quantitative comparison of the time averaged dense phase probability as well as the velocity profiles at various distances from the distributor has been undertaken in this study by means of the definition of a discrepancy factor, which accounts for the quadratic difference between simulation and experiments The resulting comparison shows and acceptable resemblance between simulation and experiments for dense phase probability, and good agreement for bubble diameter and velocity in two dimensional beds, which is in harmony with other previous studies. However, regarding the time averaged velocity of the dense phase, the present study clearly reveals that simulation and experiments only agree qualitatively in the two dimensional bed tested, the vertical component of the simulated dense phase velocity being nearly an order of magnitude larger than the one obtained from the PIV experiments. This discrepancy increases with the height above the distributor of the two dimensional bed, and it is even larger for the horizontal component of the time averaged dense phase velocity. In other words, the results presented in this work indicate that the fine agreement commonly encountered between simulated and real beds on bubble hydrodynamics is not a sufficient condition to ensure that the dense phase velocity obtained with two fluid models is similar to that from experimental measurements on two dimensional beds.

Using two fluid model simulations, the present work aims at characterizing the interchange due to gas advection between the emulsion phase and bubbles in fully bubbling beds of Geldart group B particles that are fluidized with air. In the studied beds the bubbles are slow, which means that the advection transport of gas through the bubble boundary is the main mechanism of gas interchange. In an initial ver ification step, the pressure distribution and the gas interchange coefficient for isolated bubbles obtained in the two fluid simulation are compared with the classical potential flow theory of fluidized beds, pro viding concordant results. In a second step, the work analyzes the gas interchange in fully bubbling beds and the effects of the superficial velocity, bed height, and particle diameter on the interchange coefficient and the crossflow ratio. The results indicate that both the interchange coefficient and the crossflow ratio in bubbling beds are about two times those predicted by the potential theory of isolated bubbles. A cor rected model for the gas interchange is proposed based on the introduction of the gas throughflow into the classical potential flow theory. As a consequence, the gas interchange coefficient in the corrected model is a function of the superficial gas velocity instead of the minimum fluidization velocity.

This paper presents a modelling approach for simulating tars and particulate (dust) removal in a moving bed heat exchange filter (MBHEF) in order to satisfy gas requirements of end-use syngas applications: engines and turbines. The two-dimension, adiabatic, steady-state proposed model accounts for two-phase (gas and solid) and neglects conduction and mass diffusion. Tars condensation is modelled through representative tar class lumps: phenol (class 2), naphthalene (class 4), pyrene (class 5). The model also considers tar concentration influence on the tar dew point. The filtration model is taken from literature. A sensitivity analysis is performed varying the particle size and the superficial gas velocity. Maps of temperature and tars abatement efficiency are presented. The simulation results indicate the feasibility of the use a MBHEF as tars removal equipment benefiting its advantages against others gas-cleaning methods with acceptable pollutant removal efficiencies, ranging 88e94% for ranges studied. Results also point out low gas velocities (0.5-1 m/s) and high particle size (400e700 mm) for reducing operational costs in MBHEFs with compact size.