Effect of Gas Distributor Structure on Fluidization Characteristics in a Gas-Solid Fluidized Bed

In the present paper, the experimental method and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method were used to investigate the effect of gas distributors with different orifice sizes and orifice pitches on fluidization characteristics in a gas-solid fluidized bed. The Euler-Euler two fluid model (TFM) approach based on the kinetic theory of granular flow (KTGF) and the standard k-epsilon turbulence model was employed in the numerical simulation by using ANSYS Fluent 15.0. The results showed that the orifice size and the orifice pitch of gas distributor had a significant influence on the flow characteristics in the gas-solid fluidized bed. With a decreasing orifice size and orifice pitch of gas distributor having the same opening area, the distributor pressure drop, the initial bubble size, and the height of dead zone just above the distributor were decreased, and the bed pressure drop was increased more than that of the larger orifice size and orifice pitch of distributors, the distribution of solid volume fraction was also more homogeneous for the smaller orifice size.