Study of Heat Transfer and Hydrodynamics in a Gas-Solid Fluidized Bed Reactor Experimentally and Numerically

In this research, the heat transfer and hydrodynamics of a gas-solid fluidized bed reactor were studied experimentally and computationally. A multi-fluid Eulerian computational model incorporating the kinetic theory for solid particles was developed and used to simulate the heat conducting gas-solid flows in a fluidized bed configuration. Momentum exchange coefficients were evaluated using the Syamlal-O'Brien drag functions. Temperature distributions of different phases in the reactor were also computed. Good agreement was found between the model predictions and the experimentally obtained data for the bed expansion ratio as well as the qualitative gas-solid flow patterns. The simulation and experimental results showed that the gas temperature decreases as it moves upward in the reactor, while the solid particle temperature increases. Pressure drop and temperature distribution predicted by the simulations were in good agreement with the experimental measurements at superficial gas velocities higher than the minimum fluidization velocity. Also, the predicted time-average local voidage profiles were in reasonable agreement with the experimental results. The study showed that the computational model was capable of predicting the heat transfer and the hydrodynamic behavior of gas-solid fluidized bed flows with reasonable accuracy.