(54c) Predicting Gas-Solid Bubbling Bed Flows Using Continuum Modeling

A high speed gas jet injected into a bed of particles causes bubble formation that typically enhances mixing between the gas medium and particles. This favorable type of flow is employed in many industrial processes such as coal and biomass gasification. The aim of the current project is to develop an accurate and feasible method to model such flows. The Eulerian/Continuum framework, which treats particles as a continuous fluid-like phase is employed for versatility and computational feasibility. The major challenge in continuum modeling is in appropriate descriptions of terms requiring closure, which are particle stress due to translation and collision, gas-particle drag force, particle stress due to friction and gas-particle turbulence interaction. While the description of the former two terms are now more or less well-established, there is no consensus on the description of the latter two terms, which play a very important role in such dense turbulent flows. This talk will focus on evaluating currently available friction and turbulence interaction models by validating them against our own bubbling fluidized bed experiments with the aim of finding an appropriate description for the particle frictional stress and turbulence interaction.