Theoretical and experimental studies of dynamics of bubbling and slugging fluidised beds

Fluidized beds are commonly used in chemical, petroleum, process and power industries, e.g. for drying, catalytic reaction and combustion. Two-fluid granular temperature models were used to simulate bubbling and slugging fluidized beds. The simulation results by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis and experimental results obtained by electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) were presented. The simulation and experimental results, including the solids concentration profile, temporal variation of average solids concentration, auto-correlation coefficient, and frequency spectrum were compared. The CFD results matched well with the ECT results. In the bubbling regime, the cross section was largely occupied by solids with scattered gas bubbles. The solids concentration fluctuated more intensively near the wall than in the central area. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the AIChE Spring Annual Meeting - The 5th World Congress on Particle Technology (Orlando, FL 4/23-27/2006).