Design of spout-fluidized bed (SFB) in terms of hydrodynamic aspect utilizing numerical method

A spout fluidized bed (SFB) is designed and investigated in order to assess optimum configuration. Firstly, validation of numerical study is done by comparing suitable experiment. TFM (Two-Fluid Model) approach is performed with kinetic theory of granular flow (KTGF). Furthermore, gas phase is modelled by k-epsilon turbulence model. The results of this study are completely in the acceptable range such as 10.1 % for velocity deviation and 10 % for voidage deviation when the validation is performed in the related literature comparing with the existing studies (max. particle velocity deviation 26 %, max voidage deviation 15 %). Nine different configurations are investigated by changing conical angle as 50°, 60° and 70° and number of fluidizing air orifice as 70, 140 and 210, respectively. The effect of conical angle and number of fluidizing air orifice is investigated at SFB for two different flow rate ratios (0.15 and 0.43). As a result of the analysis, doubling fluidized orifice number has positive effect on 0.15 flow rate ratio cases, tripling get better results at 0.43 flow rate ratio cases. Besides, better particle mixing is obtained at 70° cases. While each case shows own strong properties in terms of particle velocity and mixing, configuration should be selected with regard to the operation to be carried out. Variable volume flow rates should be investigated for different level of auxiliary fluidizing air orifices for further studies.