Multi-scale modeling of gas-fluidized beds

Numerical models of gas-fluidized beds have become an important tool in the design and scale up of gas-solid chemical reactors. However, a single numerical model which includes the solid-solid and solid-fluid interaction in full detail is not feasible for industrial-scale equipment, and for this reason one has to resort to a multiscale approach. The idea is that gas-solid flow is described by a hierarchy of models at different length scales, where the particle-particle and fluid-particle interactions are taken into account with different levels of detail. The results and insights obtained from the more fundamental models are used to develop closure laws to feed continuum models which can be used to compute the flow structures on a much larger (engineering) scale. Our multi-scale approach involves the lattice Boltzmann model, the discrete particle model, and the continuum model based on the kinetic theory of granular flow. In this chapter we give a detailed account of each of these models as they are employed at the University of Twente, accompanied by some illustrative computational results. Finally, we discuss two promising approaches for modeling industrial-size gas-fluidized beds, which are currently being explored independently at the Princeton University and the University of Twente.