Extended method of moment for general population balance models including size dependent growth rate, aggregation and breakage kernels

Among the various methods for the solution of population balances (PB) equations, the moments based methods are some of the most successful and popular. Moment based methods have demonstrated advantages such as reduced computational effort especially for applications that couple population balance (PB) simulation with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The methods, however, suffers from two main drawbacks: the inability to yield the number density directly and limitation to system models that only consider size independent growth expression and certain breakage and aggregation kernels. This article presents an extension to the standard MOM (SMOM), the extended method of moment (EMOM), which not only allows the prediction of the number density directly in most cases, but also makes it applicable to systems with size dependent growth and any particle aggregation and breakage kernels. The method is illustrated and tested by reference to case studies that were well studied systems in the literature. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.