Circulating fluidized bed reactors-Experimental optimization of loopseal aeration and parametric study using CPFD simulations

Circulating fluidized bed (CFB) technology has diverse applications from process industry to energy generation. Experimental studies were performed in a CFB to analyse the effect of loopseal aeration for the rate of particle cir-culation, which is a crucial process parameter. The experimental data were used to re-evaluate the performance of optimized particle modeling parameters in computational particle fluid dynamic (CPFD) simulations. Two sand particle sizes of 850-1000 mu m and 1000-1180 mu m were used in the experiments with varying loopseal aer-ation. The experiments could conclude that the rate of circulation is possible to improve greatly by slight reduc-tion of the particle size. The aeration at the standpipe of the loopseal showed a higher contribution for the circulation than bottom aeration. CPFD simulations could capture exact rate of particle circulation and the core-annulus structure in the riser section. Subsequently, the duly validated CPFD model was used to analyse the particle residence time, effects of particle inventory and the riser aeration.(c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).