Assessment of Different Discrete Particle Methods Ability To Predict Gas-Particle Flow in a Small-Scale Fluidized Bed

Abstract

Several discrete particle methods exist in the open literature to simulate fluidized bed systems, such as discrete element method (DEM), time-driven hard sphere (TDHS), coarse-grained particle method (CGPM), coarse grained hard sphere (CGHS), and multiphase particle-in-cell (MP-PIC). The main difference between these methods is in the treatment of particle–particle interactions: by calculating collision forces (DEM and CGPM), using momentum conservation laws (TDHS and CGHS), or based on the particle stress model (MP-PIC). Here, these methods are compared by simulating the same small-scale fluidized bed with the same open-source code MFIX. The results indicate that both modeling the particle–particle collision by TDHS and lumping a few particles in a parcel increase the computation speed with little loss in accuracy. However, the MP-PIC method predicts an unphysical particle–particle overlap, which results in incorrect overall bed hydrodynamics. These results suggest using the CGHS method for fluidized bed...