CFD simulation of cylindrical spouted beds by the kinetic theory of granular flow

Abstract

Abstract The hydrodynamics of a cylindrical spouted bed was studied using a Eulerian–Eulerian Two-Fluid Model (TFM) including the kinetic theory of granular flows. A series of simulations was performed; and the influences of the drag model, solid shear viscosity model, discretization scheme, as well as, transport equation for granular temperature were studied. The CFD results showed that different drag and solid shear viscosity models led to significant differences in the model prediction for the dilute region of the bed. The representative unit cell (RUC) drag model and the Syamlal et al. [1] viscosity model were found to be in close quantitative agreement with the experimental observations. In terms of the solid flow pattern in the spout and fountain zones, it was found that an algebraic equation for granular temperature with the appropriate coefficient of restitution provided reasonable results at considerable computational economy compared with the full transport equation. It was shown that the discretization scheme significantly affects the computational model predictions; therefore, the computational modeling scheme should be optimized. The TFM model was also used to predict particle velocity profiles and voidage distribution in the spout and fountain regions. The simulation results were fairly consistent with the experimental data in a wide range of gas flow rates.