Eulerian simulations of bubbling behaviour in gas-solid fluidised beds

In literature little attempt has been made to verify experimentally Eulerian-Eulerian gas-solid model simulations of bubbling fluidised beds with existing correlations for bubble size or bubble velocity. In the present study, a CFD model for a free bubbling fluidised bed was implemented in the commercial code CFX of AEA Technology. This CFD model is based on a two fluid model including the kinetic theory of granular flow. Simulations of the bubble behaviour in fluidised beds at different superficial gas velocities and at different column diameters are compared to the Darton et al. (1977) equation for the bubble diameter versus the height in the column and to the Hilligardt and Werther (1986) equation, corrected for the two dimensional geometry using the bubble rise velocity correlation of Pyle and Harrison (1967). It is shown that the predicted bubble sizes are in agreement with the Darton et al. (1977) bubble size equation. Comparison of the predicted bubble velocity with the Hilligardt and Werther (1986) equation shows a deviation for the velocity of smaller bubbles. To explain this, the predicted bubbles are divided into two bubble classes : bubbles that have either coalesced, broken-up or have touched the wall, and bubbles without these occurrences. The bubbles of this second class are in agreement with the Hilligardt and Werther (1986) equation. Fit parameters of Hilligardt and Werther (1986) are compared to the fit parameters obtained in this work. It is shown that coalescence, break-up, and direct wall interactions are very important effects, often dominating the dynamic bubble behaviour, but these effects are not accounted for by the Hilligardt and Werther (1986) equation. © 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.