MODELING & EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF SEGREGATION IN FLUIDIZED BED FOR NON SPHERICAL PARTICLES

Abstract

The focus of this work is to have a better understanding of fluidization, specifically by both modeling and experimental study of fluidized bed with non-spherical particles. Fluidization quality is closely related to particle characteristics such as size and shape. Hence, understanding the effects of particle characteristics is of vital importance for better design and control of fluidization operations under different conditions. In the current work, particle shape is chosen as ellipsoidal since ellipsoidal particles are more similar with particles found in industrial fluidized beds and ellipsoids can be more easily compared with spheres than polygons and cylindrical particles. Fluidized bed with non-spherical particles will be modeled using DEM-CFD approach and it will be used to characterize the different fluidization parameters like minimum fluidization velocity, pressure drop, bubbling velocity and bed porosity and the effect of size and shape on these parameters, results will be compared to spherical case. With this hydrodynamic study I will also study the mixing of two different types of ellipsoids namely prolates and oblates. Later on I will do simulations for a system composed of oblates and prolates and experiments will also be conducted to validate the results found by simulation of three dimensional fluidized bed.