DEM study on discharge behavior of ternary cylindrical activated coke particles

Abstract

The discharge behavior including segregation of ternary cylindrical activated in a funnel is numerically studied through DEM. A variety of variables (e.g., particle shape, the filling method, mass fraction, and filling sequence) are investigated. The results show that whether it is layered or mixed filling, the discharge velocity of spherical particles is higher than that of cylindrical particles. The contact number of medium-sized particles under layered filling is larger than that of mixed filling conditions. The discharge velocity decreases with the increase of the mass fraction of the large particles and the segregation of the small particles decreases. For different filling sequences, the discharge behaviors are different, while the change characteristics of the discharge mass fraction of the same layer particles are not obvious. When there are medium-sized particles at the top layer, small particles in the middle layer, and large particles at the bottom layer, the small particles will form a protective film for large particles and hinder the unloading of large particles. • DEM study of discharge behavior of ternary cylindrical activated coke particles is presented. • Cylinder shape affects the descending velocity and segregation. • Influence of some key variables on discharge behavior is quantitatively investigated.