Study of the Influence of the Mean Particle Diameter Choice and the Fractions Number on the Quality of Fluidized Bed Numerical Simulation

Abstract

We investigate the choosing of the fractions number for numerical simulation of a polydisperse bubbling fluidized bed using the Sauter mean diameter. The results were verified using experiments from a glass tube with a diameter of 2.2 cm and a height of 50 cm. As a fluidizing agent, air with a velocity of 0.0716 m/s to 0.1213 m/s was used. Polydispersed aluminum oxide particles with a diameter size of 20–140 µm were used as a solid phase. We propose a simple method for choosing the fractions number for the polydispersed granular phase in order to improve the quality of the numerical simulation results. In this study, we consider the Sauter mean diameter D32 for each selected group of particles for the solid phase. By increasing the number of solid phase fractions, it is possible to obtain a mean boundary of the bubbling fluidized bed close to the observed experimental results. In our study, the division of polydispersed powder into four distinct solid-phase fractions enabled us to attain satisfactory agreement with experiments regarding the average value of the bed boundary.