PREDICTION OF HEAT TRANSFER IN A TURBULENT GAS-SOLID PIPE FLOW USING A TWO-FLUID MODEL

Abstract

ABSTRACT The dynamic and thermal behaviour of a turbulent gas-solid flow in a vertical pipe has been numerically studied by means of an original two-fluid approach which includes the effects of particle-particle and particle-wall collisions as well as particle-turbulence interactions. A k-ϵ-kp model for the flow dynamics has been combined with the energy balances of each phase. Comparisons have been carried out with available experimental data, first for the dynamic validation, and then for the thermal portion of the problem, in the case of rather large panicles (200 to 500 µm). Heat transfer from wall to suspension is seen to be strongly affected by particles. As a consequence, a suspension Nusselt number decrease of 20% may be observed at loading ratio smaller than two. Further increase is possible if more panicles are injected. Predictions had excellent agreement with experimental data for 500 µm particles. Slight discrepancies appear for smaller particles, probably due to more complex, partially understood panicle-turbulence interactions.