Numerical and experimental study of the fluidization of alumina particles

In this paper, we performed numerical simulations and carried out experimental validation to study the fluidization of alumina particles in a gas–solid fluidization unit. The experiment enabled the determination of the minimum fluidization velocity from the pressure drop profile and the rising velocity of the bubble. We simulated the fluidized system using the commercial CFD software ANSYS Fluent, based on the resolution of the Navier–Stokes equations. The numerical model has shown its ability to accurately predict the fluidization process and a good agreement between the numerical and experimental results was achieved.