Investigation of Bubble Behavior in Gas-Solid Fluidized Beds with Different Gas Distributors

The behavior of gas bubbles in a gas-solid fluidized bed was investigated by computational fluid dynamics simulation. A two-phase flow model incorporating the kinetic theory of granular flow was used to study the effect of gas distributor design on the size distribution and the rise velocity of gas bubbles in the bed column. The experiments were conducted on four gas distributors with different orifice sizes and pitches. The geometry of the gas distributor had a significant influence on the bubble behavior in the gas-solid fluidized bed. The effects of static bed height and superficial gas velocity were also considered. Bubble diameter and bubble rise velocity increased with gas velocity. However, at low bed height, the deviation in bubble size was indistinct because at higher gas velocity the rising tendency of the bubble formed just above the gas distributor increased and the probability of bubble coalescence decreased.