CFD-DEM Simulation of Fluidization of Non-Spherical Particles

The fluidization of non-spherical particles is very common in some industrial fields such as biomass utilization. It is well known that CFD-DEM (Computational Fluid Dynamics - Discrete Element Method) is a powerful tool for studying the fluidization. However, few researchers have investigated the fluidization of non-spherical particles using CFD-DEM. In this study, a robust and efficient CFD-DEM algorithm is proposed for the fluidization of non-spherical particles, in which the non-spherical particles (including rod-like particles, disk-like particles, tablet particles, and non-spherical particles in other shapes) are described by super-ellipsoid model, multi-super-ellipsoid model, and multi-sphere model. The volume fraction of the CFD cell and the drag force between the non-spherical particle and the fluid are calculated by dividing the particle into more than 100 parts to realize the two-way coupling between the non-spherical particles and the fluid. To validate the prediction accuracy of the CFD-DEM model, the simulations of the fluidization are then compared with the corresponding experiments. The results demonstrate that the proposed CFD-DEM model has a rather high efficiency and accuracy for modeling the fluidization of non-spherical particles in fluidized bed.