Three-dimensional simulation of liquid injection, film formation and transport, in fluidized beds

Liquid injection, and film formation and transport in dense-phase gas-solids fluidized beds are numerically simulated in three dimensions using a collisional exchange model that is based on the mechanism that collisions cause transfer of liquid mass, momentum, and energy between particles. In the model, each of the particles is represented by a solid core and a liquid film surrounding the core. The model is incorporated in the framework of the commercial code Barracuda (R) developed by CPFD Software. The commercial software is an advanced CFD-based computational tool where the particles are treated as discrete entities, calculated by the MP-PIC method, and tracked using the Lagrangian method. Details of the collisional liquid transfer model have been previously presented in O'Rourke, Zhao, and Snider (2009); this paper presents new capabilities and proof-testing of the collision model and a new method to better quantify the penetration length. Example calculations of a fluidized bed without liquid injection show the expected effect of collisions on the reduction of granular temperature (fluctuational kinetic energy) of the bed. When applied to liquid injection into a dense-phase fluidized bed under different conditions, the model predicts liquid penetration lengths comparable to the experiments. In addition, the simulation reveals for the first time the dynamic mixing of the liquid droplets with the bed particles and the transient distribution of the droplets inside the bed. (C) 2009 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.