Conical spouted beds have been commonly used for drying suspensions, solutions and pasty materials. They can also be utilized in many other processes, such as catalytic partial oxidation of methane to synthesis gas, coating of tablets, coal gasification and liquefaction, pyrolysis of sawdust or mixtures of wood residues.
The main objectives of this work include both the experimental research and mathematical modelling of the conical spouted bed hydrodynamics.
For experimental research, pressure transducers and static pressure probes were applied to investigate the evolution of the internal spout and the local static pressure distribution; optical fibre probes were utilized to measure axial particle velocity profiles and voidage profiles; the step tracer injection technique using helium as the tracer and thermal conductivity cells as detectors was used to investigate the gas mixing behaviour inside a conical spouted bed. It was found that many factors might affect calibration of the effective distance of an optical fibre probe. Therefore, a new calibration setup was designed and assembled, and a comprehensive sensitivity analysis was conducted to calibrate the optical probes used in this study.
For mathematical modelling, a stream-tube model based on the bed structure inside a conical spouted bed was proposed to simulate partial spouting states. By introducing an adjustable parameter, this model is capable of predicting the total pressure drop under different operating conditions, and estimating axial superficial gas velocity profiles and gauge pressure profiles.
A mathematical model based on characteristics of conical spouted beds and the commercial software FLUENT was also developed and validated using measured experimental data. The proposed new CFD model can simulate both stable spouting and partial spouting states, with an adjustable solids-phase source term. At stable spouting states, simulation results agree very well with almost all experimental data, such as static pressure profiles, axial particle velocity profiles, voidage profiles etc. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis was also conducted to investigate the effect of all possible factors on simulation results, including the fluid inlet profile, solid bulk viscosity, frictional viscosity, restitution coefficient, exchange coefficient, and solid phase source term.
The proposed new CFD model was also used successfully to simulate gas mixing behaviours inside a conical spouted bed, and simulate cylindrical packed beds as well as cylindrical fluidized beds in one code package.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:BVAU./61 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Wang, Zhiguo |
| Publisher | University of British Columbia |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | 6293063 bytes, application/pdf |
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