Scaling of bubbling fluidized bed reactors with glicksman’s viscous limit set and CFD simulation

Abstract

Glicksman’s viscous limit set of dimensionless parameters have been investigated using experimentally verifi ed computational fl uid dynamics model. Simulations have been performed for the two bubbling fl uidized beds with different particle sizes and densities. Dimensionless average pressure drops across the bed height, dimensionless pressure standard deviations and dimensionless relative pressures have been investigated as a function of dimensionless superfi cial gas velocities for the two beds. Fluctuation of solid volume fraction and contours of solid volume fraction have also been investigated at different dimensionless gas velocities. Time series data of the pressure fl uctuation and solid volume fraction are compared. The results indicate that the fl uid dynamic similarity between two beds holds up to particle Reynolds number of 15. After this, the bubble activities in the two beds start to deviate signifi cantly. The results of the work show that the analysis of solid volume fraction fl uctuation gives higher accuracy than time-series pressure fl uctuation when scaling the bubbling fl uidized bed within the viscous limit.