Investigation of gas-solid fluidized bed with non-spherical particles

Mario A Ruvalcaba, University of Texas at El Paso

Abstract

The number of experimental and numerical studies of multiphase flows has remarkably increased over the last several years. This research has abundant applications in energy, chemical, and conversion processes. Common use of these technologies includes catalytic cracking for petroleum refineries, fluidized bed reactors (type of chemical reactor), interface modification, and has been an important technology breakthrough in coal gasification. The present work will concentrate on the investigation and validation of gas-solid flows utilizing numerical methods. The gas-solid flows study on this research assumes the solid and gas phases as continua with averaged properties. The fluid flow computation was achieved using two different solvers: 1) FLUENT a general-purpose CFD code based on the finite volume method on a collocated grid. FLUENT technology offers a wide array of physical models that can be applied to a wide array of industries, 2) MFIX (Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges) a solver developed at the Department of Energy's National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) for multiphase flows. MFIX is a general-purpose hydrodynamic model that describes chemical reactions and heat transfer in dense or dilute fluid-solids flows, typical in energy conversion and chemical processing reactors. MFIX calculations give detailed information on pressure, temperature, composition, and velocity distributions.

Subject Area

Civil engineering|Energy

Recommended Citation

Ruvalcaba, Mario A, "Investigation of gas-solid fluidized bed with non-spherical particles" (2012). ETD Collection for University of Texas, El Paso. AAI3601123.
https://scholarworks.utep.edu/dissertations/AAI3601123

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