Fluidized bed gas-solid heat transfer using a CFD-DEM coarse-graining technique

Abstract

Computational Fluid Dynamics - Discrete Element Method (CFD-DEM) is extensively used for modeling heat transfer in gas-solid fluidized beds. However, CFD-DEM is computationally expensive, leading to a restriction regarding the number of simulated particles. Coarse-grained CFD-DEM is a technique to circumvent this constraint, allowing one to simulate larger fluidized beds. In this work, a scaling law used for coarse-graining hydrodynamics is generalized to gas-solid heat-transfer. This approach for coarse-graining heat transfer is tested using three different superficial gas velocities where the coarse-grained particle temperatures and Nusselt numbers are obtained. The particle temperature shows good correspondence with the original system for all cases and the Nusselt number is accurately predicted by the coarse-graining scaling law.