LD2668 .T4 1966 T584 / Master of Science

Fluidization of solid particles using gas flow is an important process in chemical and pharmaceutical industries. The dynamics of fluidisation are intricately related to particle scale physics. Fluid-particle interactions dominate gas-solid fluidization behaviour for particles with average size and density greater than 10-4 m and 103 kg/m3, respectively, classified as Geldart B and D particles. Inter-particle forces, such as cohesion, play an increasingly important role in the fluidization dynamics of smaller particles, which are classified as Geldart A and C. In particular, interesting fluidization regimes have been noticed for weakly cohesive Geldart A particles, exhibiting a window of uniform fluidization before the onset of bubbling behaviour. Despite widespread industrial interests, the fundamental understanding of the mechanisms that underlie these fluidization regimes is poor. The present study aims to improve the understanding of fluidization dynamics of Geldart A regimes using numerical simulations. A DEM-CFD model was employed to capture the widely separated spatial and temporal scales associated with fluidization behaviour. The model couples the locally averaged Navier-Stokes equation for fluid with a discrete description of the particles. The methodology and its computer implementation are verified and validated to assess the extent of fluidization physics that it is able to capture. Verification cases check the implementation of the inter-phase momentum transfer term, drag model implementation and pressure-velocity coupling. The test cases are employed in order to cover a wide range of flow conditions. Robust validation tests for complex fluidization phenomena such as bubbling, spouting and bidisperse beds have been conducted to assess the predictive capabilities of the DEM-CFD solver. The simulation results for time and spatially averaged fluidziation behaviour are compared to experimental measurements obtained from the literature, and are shown to have capture fluidization physics qualitatively. Robust features of bubbling fluidization, such as minimum fluidization velocity, frequency of pressure drop fluctuations, segregation rates and solid circulation patterns were captured. Furthermore, the DEM-CFD model is critically assessed in terms of model conceptualization and parameter estimation, including those for drag closures, particle-wall boundary conditions, bed height and particle shape effects. The validation studies establish modelling best-practice guidelines and the level of discrepancy against the analytical solutions or experimental measurements. Having developed the model and established its predictive capability, it is used to probe the hydrodynamics of weakly cohesive particles. Cohesive interactions are captured by employing a pair-wise van derWaals force model. The cohesive strength of the granular bed is quantified by the ratio of the maximum van der Waals force to the particle gravitational force, defined as the granular Bond number. The Bond number of the bed is increased systematically from 0-10 to examine the role of cohesion in the fluidization behaviour of fine powders while keeping the particle size and density constant across all the simulations. The idea was to segregate the hydrodynamics associated with size and density of the particles from the inter-particle interactions. The size and density of the particles are carefully chosen at a scale where inter-particle forces are present but minimal [Seville et al., 2000]. The Geldart A fluidization behaviour is captured for granular beds with Bond numbers ranging from 1 to 3. Many robust features of Geldart A fluidization, such as pressure drop overshoot, delay in the onset of bubbling, macroscopic Umf predictions and uniform bed expansion are captured in the DEM-CFD framework. The expanded bed was characterized according to criteria that the particles are highly immobile in this regime and the expanded porosity is related to inlet velocity by Richardson–Zaki correlations. Sudden jumps in the magnitudes of global granular temperature were found near the regime transitions. This observation was used an indicator of the onset of bubbling and quantification of minimum bubbling velocity (Umb). The window of the expanded bed regime (quantified as Umb - Umf) was shown to be an increasing function of cohesive strength of the bed. Furthermore, the stability of the expanded bed was probed by studying the response of the expanded bed to sudden inertial and voidage shocks. A kinematic wave, generated as a response to the voidage shock, was shown to slow down with increasing cohesion and decreasing hydrodynamic forces. Furthermore, predictions of Umb by DEM-CFD simulations for weakly cohesive beds were compared against empirical correlations by Valverde [2013] with an excellent match. Stress analysis of the expanded bed revealed the presence of tensile stresses. As the inlet velocity is increased beyond the minimum fluidization velocity, a longitudinal shift of these negative stresses is observed until they reach the top of the bed. Negative stresses were seen at the bed surface at the onset of bubbling. The role of cohesion stresses in the formation of expanded bed and suppression of bubbling was highlighted. Finally, the microstructure of the expanded bed was probed at different local micro and mescoscopic length scales. Evidence of clustering, agglomeration and cavities were presented in the expanded bed. Expanded bed expansion was shown to have mesostructural inhomogeneities present, which is contrary to the belief of homogeneous expansion.

Thesis. 1978. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Includes bibliographies. / M.S.

Conical fluidized bed dryers are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry due to their high heat and mass transfer characteristics. Despite their widespread use, very little is known about the hydrodynamics of conical fluidized bed dryers. Wet pharmaceutical granule has high moisture content and wide particle size distribution (PSD), which can lead to poor mixing and non uniform drying. Uneven moisture content in the final product can adversely affect the quality and shelf life of these high value drugs. Previous studies on the conical fluidized bed dryers focused on the study of the gas phase, however motion of particulate phase has never been studied. Particle tracking is an important tool to study the motion of the particulate phase. Two particle tracking techniques were developed and used to study the motion of the particulate phase in a conical fluidized bed dryer. The first technique was radioactive particle tracking (RPT) which was developed at the University of Saskatchewan laboratory for a vessel having conical geometry. Experiments were conducted using dry pharmaceutical granule and during the actual drying of wet pharmaceutical granule. Two radioactive tracers of different sizes (1.6 to 2.6 mm) were tracked in each set of experiments to determine the effect of particle size on particle motion and particle mixing. Superficial gas velocities of 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5m/s were used in dry bed studies to quantify the effect of superficial gas velocity. The second particle tracking technique was developed at the labs of Merck Frosst Canada Inc. Movies were captured using a high speed video camera coupled to a borescope and then analyzed off-line using image analysis software.Three powders having mean particle diameters of 774, 468 and 200 microns were used. Experiments were conducted at superficial gas velocities of 1.5, 2 and 3 m/s. <p>RPT revealed that there is a distinct circulation pattern of the particulate phase. Particles move upwards at high velocities near the centre of the bed and fall slowly near the walls. Furthermore, most of the gas flow is concentrated near the centre of the bed and the circulation pattern was observed at all the superficial gas velocities. Particle size of the tracer particle and PSD of the bed material had an appreciable impact on particle mixing with bigger particles exhibiting higher segregation tendencies than the smaller ones in the case of dry granule having a broad PSD. Particle segregation due to size difference was more pronounced at a superficial gas velocity of 1 m/s. However, segregation decreased with an increase in superficial gas velocity. During drying of wet granule, particle mixing and motion of the tracer particle was poor during the first 7 minutes of drying suggesting that most of the gas flow was concentrated near the centre of the bed. Particle mixing and average particle speeds increased considerably when the moisture content in the granule was less than 18 wt% suggesting a change in the hydrodynamics of the bed with the gas being more evenly distributed throughout the bed. Image analysis of high speed movies also suggested that a dilute region existed at the center of the bed. These observations were in agreement with the observations made by RPT.

Recent studies have shown that, in a sufficiently deep gas-solid fluidized bed of Geldart A particles, gas streaming may occur allowing gas to bypass a large portion of the particle bed. Since this is a newly observed phenomenon in fluidized beds, there is uncertainty and lack of information about the various aspects of the streaming flow. The objective of the current project is to investigate the streaming phenomenon with a combination of experimentation and modeling. In the experimental part, pressure fluctuations as a measure of the fluidized bed hydrodynamics were used to study the influence of different parameters on the behavior of a deep fluidized bed. Pressure fluctuations have been measured at 8 axial locations from 4 to 150 cm above the gas distributor for bed depths and gas velocities ranging from 0.4 to 1.6 m and 0.04 to 0.20 m/s (equal to 10 to 50 times minimum fluidization velocity), respectively. Two particle size distributions with Sauter mean diameters of 48 µm and 84 µm and two distributor plates with differing percentage open area were also tested for each bed depth and gas velocity. Analysis of pressure fluctuations in the time and frequency domains, in combination with visual observations revealed that streaming flow emerges gradually at bed depths greater than 1 m. Increased gas velocity and fines content act to delay the onset of streaming, but can not completely eliminate it over the range of velocities examined. The two different distributor designs had no measurable effect on the streaming flow. The results of this study are provided in the first section of the present report.<p> In order to further investigate the nature of streaming flow, several cases of forced streams and jetting flows were designed and conducted, in addition to the natural streaming flow in deep beds. Results indicated that the natural streaming most closely resembles the imposed stream which not only the imposed stream, but additional gas added through the distributor. The case of jet flows with no additional gas resembles the severe streaming that might happen in very deep beds with the existence of completely non-fluidized regions. Application of supporting jets in addition to the main gas flow could enhance the fluidization quality to some extent, however, not enough to provide a normal fluidization. Wavelet analysis of the pressure fluctuations showed that in deep fluidized beds, bubbling activity with the typical dominant frequency coexist with the streaming flow, with a minor contribution. Wavelet findings suggested that the streaming flow can be considered to form by increasing the relative importance of one available stream of bubble activity with increasing bed depth. The results of this study are provided in the second section of this report. Further study of the streaming flow was undertaken with computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation of the deep fluidized bed. CFD simulation of fine Geldart A particles has met with challenges in the open literature and various modifications have been proposed to be able to model fluidized beds of these particles. In the present work, the commercial CFD codes FLUENT and MFIX were initially tested for the modeling of deep fluidized bed of Geldart A particles. However, simulation results did not show any sign of streaming flow in the fluidized bed. Subsequently, the commercial CFD code BARRACUDATM that has been claimed by the developers to be appropriate for this purpose, was tested. Due to the lack of data on the performance of this code, a simple case of modeling a freely bubbling fluidized bed of Geldart A particles was attempted first. For this purpose, four different simulation cases, which included three different numerical grid sizes and two drag models with a realistic particle size distribution were designed and tested. The simulated bed expansion, bubble size distribution, rise velocity and solid fraction were compared with commonly accepted correlations and experimental data from the literature. The results showed a promising predictive capability of the code without the need for modifying the drag model or other constitutive relations of the model. The third section of the report presents the simulation results of this study.<p> The BARRACUDA code was then used for simulating the deep fluidized bed of Geldart A particles. However, similar to the previous CFD codes tested, instead of streaming flow, bubbling fluidization was predicted. Therefore, a phenomenological model was developed to better understand the streaming flow. According to the model results, the stream represents a zone of much lower pressure drop compared to other parts of the bed, which can be a possible reason for the formation and stability of the streaming flow inside the fluidized bed. The model results showed that increasing the bed depth enhances the streaming flow, while increasing the gas velocity improves the uniformity of the bed and decreases the streaming severity. Streaming flow was found to be less severe for larger particle sizes. All of these trends are in conformity with the experimental results. These findings provide the content of the fourth and final section of this report.

Conical fluidized bed dryers are widely used in the pharmaceutical industry due to their high heat and mass transfer characteristics. Despite their widespread use, very little is known about the hydrodynamics of conical fluidized bed dryers. Wet pharmaceutical granule has high moisture content and wide particle size distribution (PSD), which can lead to poor mixing and non uniform drying. Uneven moisture content in the final product can adversely affect the quality and shelf life of these high value drugs. Previous studies on the conical fluidized bed dryers focused on the study of the gas phase, however motion of particulate phase has never been studied. Particle tracking is an important tool to study the motion of the particulate phase. Two particle tracking techniques were developed and used to study the motion of the particulate phase in a conical fluidized bed dryer. The first technique was radioactive particle tracking (RPT) which was developed at the University of Saskatchewan laboratory for a vessel having conical geometry. Experiments were conducted using dry pharmaceutical granule and during the actual drying of wet pharmaceutical granule. Two radioactive tracers of different sizes (1.6 to 2.6 mm) were tracked in each set of experiments to determine the effect of particle size on particle motion and particle mixing. Superficial gas velocities of 1, 1.5, 2 and 2.5m/s were used in dry bed studies to quantify the effect of superficial gas velocity. The second particle tracking technique was developed at the labs of Merck Frosst Canada Inc. Movies were captured using a high speed video camera coupled to a borescope and then analyzed off-line using image analysis software.Three powders having mean particle diameters of 774, 468 and 200 microns were used. Experiments were conducted at superficial gas velocities of 1.5, 2 and 3 m/s. <p>RPT revealed that there is a distinct circulation pattern of the particulate phase. Particles move upwards at high velocities near the centre of the bed and fall slowly near the walls. Furthermore, most of the gas flow is concentrated near the centre of the bed and the circulation pattern was observed at all the superficial gas velocities. Particle size of the tracer particle and PSD of the bed material had an appreciable impact on particle mixing with bigger particles exhibiting higher segregation tendencies than the smaller ones in the case of dry granule having a broad PSD. Particle segregation due to size difference was more pronounced at a superficial gas velocity of 1 m/s. However, segregation decreased with an increase in superficial gas velocity. During drying of wet granule, particle mixing and motion of the tracer particle was poor during the first 7 minutes of drying suggesting that most of the gas flow was concentrated near the centre of the bed. Particle mixing and average particle speeds increased considerably when the moisture content in the granule was less than 18 wt% suggesting a change in the hydrodynamics of the bed with the gas being more evenly distributed throughout the bed. Image analysis of high speed movies also suggested that a dilute region existed at the center of the bed. These observations were in agreement with the observations made by RPT.

Recent studies have shown that, in a sufficiently deep gas-solid fluidized bed of Geldart A particles, gas streaming may occur allowing gas to bypass a large portion of the particle bed. Since this is a newly observed phenomenon in fluidized beds, there is uncertainty and lack of information about the various aspects of the streaming flow. The objective of the current project is to investigate the streaming phenomenon with a combination of experimentation and modeling. In the experimental part, pressure fluctuations as a measure of the fluidized bed hydrodynamics were used to study the influence of different parameters on the behavior of a deep fluidized bed. Pressure fluctuations have been measured at 8 axial locations from 4 to 150 cm above the gas distributor for bed depths and gas velocities ranging from 0.4 to 1.6 m and 0.04 to 0.20 m/s (equal to 10 to 50 times minimum fluidization velocity), respectively. Two particle size distributions with Sauter mean diameters of 48 µm and 84 µm and two distributor plates with differing percentage open area were also tested for each bed depth and gas velocity. Analysis of pressure fluctuations in the time and frequency domains, in combination with visual observations revealed that streaming flow emerges gradually at bed depths greater than 1 m. Increased gas velocity and fines content act to delay the onset of streaming, but can not completely eliminate it over the range of velocities examined. The two different distributor designs had no measurable effect on the streaming flow. The results of this study are provided in the first section of the present report.<p> In order to further investigate the nature of streaming flow, several cases of forced streams and jetting flows were designed and conducted, in addition to the natural streaming flow in deep beds. Results indicated that the natural streaming most closely resembles the imposed stream which not only the imposed stream, but additional gas added through the distributor. The case of jet flows with no additional gas resembles the severe streaming that might happen in very deep beds with the existence of completely non-fluidized regions. Application of supporting jets in addition to the main gas flow could enhance the fluidization quality to some extent, however, not enough to provide a normal fluidization. Wavelet analysis of the pressure fluctuations showed that in deep fluidized beds, bubbling activity with the typical dominant frequency coexist with the streaming flow, with a minor contribution. Wavelet findings suggested that the streaming flow can be considered to form by increasing the relative importance of one available stream of bubble activity with increasing bed depth. The results of this study are provided in the second section of this report. Further study of the streaming flow was undertaken with computational fluid dynamic (CFD) simulation of the deep fluidized bed. CFD simulation of fine Geldart A particles has met with challenges in the open literature and various modifications have been proposed to be able to model fluidized beds of these particles. In the present work, the commercial CFD codes FLUENT and MFIX were initially tested for the modeling of deep fluidized bed of Geldart A particles. However, simulation results did not show any sign of streaming flow in the fluidized bed. Subsequently, the commercial CFD code BARRACUDATM that has been claimed by the developers to be appropriate for this purpose, was tested. Due to the lack of data on the performance of this code, a simple case of modeling a freely bubbling fluidized bed of Geldart A particles was attempted first. For this purpose, four different simulation cases, which included three different numerical grid sizes and two drag models with a realistic particle size distribution were designed and tested. The simulated bed expansion, bubble size distribution, rise velocity and solid fraction were compared with commonly accepted correlations and experimental data from the literature. The results showed a promising predictive capability of the code without the need for modifying the drag model or other constitutive relations of the model. The third section of the report presents the simulation results of this study.<p> The BARRACUDA code was then used for simulating the deep fluidized bed of Geldart A particles. However, similar to the previous CFD codes tested, instead of streaming flow, bubbling fluidization was predicted. Therefore, a phenomenological model was developed to better understand the streaming flow. According to the model results, the stream represents a zone of much lower pressure drop compared to other parts of the bed, which can be a possible reason for the formation and stability of the streaming flow inside the fluidized bed. The model results showed that increasing the bed depth enhances the streaming flow, while increasing the gas velocity improves the uniformity of the bed and decreases the streaming severity. Streaming flow was found to be less severe for larger particle sizes. All of these trends are in conformity with the experimental results. These findings provide the content of the fourth and final section of this report.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2000. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 160-165).

Not available / text

No description available.