Long-time coarse-grained CFD-DEM simulation of residence time distribution of polydisperse particles in a continuously operated multiple-chamber fluidized bed

Abstract

Residence time distribution of particles is a critical parameter for proper design of gas-solid fluidized beds, especially in many non-catalytic solid conversion processes where it is highly desirable to match the residence time of a particle and its complete conversion time to achieve the synchronized conversion of particles of different sizes. However, the requisite of considering particle polydispersity and the long residence time of particles required by reaction kinetics together pose a great challenge to the computational fluid dynamics study of such systems. To this end, a GPU-based, massively parallel coarse-grained CFD-DEM method-the EMMS-DPM method (Lu et al., 2014) was extended to simulate the residence time distribution of polydisperse particles in a continuously operated multiple-chamber fluidized bed with a calculation of physical time of up to one hour. It was shown that the experimentally measured pressure drop of the bed or the solid holdup can be predicted reasonably well by the ad hoc drag models of non-spherical and polydisperse particles proposed in present study; the residence time distribution of particles of whole system can also be predicted correctly; and finally, the ratio of the mean residence time of coarse particles to that of fine particles is about three, which is insufficient to achieve the synchronized conversion of particles of different sizes according to an ideally theoretical analysis, great effort is needed to get a better match between the residence time and the compete conversion time of particles.