A Structure-Dependent Multi-Fluid Model (SFM) for Heterogeneous Gas–Solid Flow

Authors: Kun Hong ^a,b, Zhansheng Shiab ^a,b, Wei Wang ^a, and Jinghai Li ^a
a The EMMS Group, State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Complex Systems, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
^b University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China

Source: This paper was published in 2013, Volume 99 of Chemical Engineering Science.

Abstract: For the heterogeneous gas–solid flow in a fluidized bed, meso-scale structures, such as bubble and cluster, have significant effects on the hydrodynamics, mass/heat transfer and reaction rate. These structures can be described with certain kinds of bimodal probability density distribution of solids concentration, i.e., the dilute-dense two-phase structures. To keep the physical nature of these meso-scale structures in mathematical formulation, a structure-dependent, multi-fluid model (SFM) was proposed. Then, the SFM was reduced to the conventional two-fluid model (TFM) as well as the hydrodynamic equations of the bubble-based and cluster-based EMMS (energy-minimization multi-scale) models by assuming different simplifications of structures. Thus, the SFM unifies these different models. A new version of bubble-based EMMS model was presented thereby and validated with comparison to experimental data. This bubble-based EMMS model was found to be applicable to wide flow regimes ranging from bubbling, turbulent to fast fluidization.