Computational and experimental studies on bed dynamics of a gas-solid fluidized bed using Geldart-A particle: A comparison

The bed dynamics of a two-dimensional gas-solid fluidized bed is studied experimentally and computationally using Geldart-A particles. Commercial software ANSYS FLUENT 13 is used for computational studies. Unsteady behavior of gas-solid fluidized bed is simulated by using the Eulerian-Eulerian model coupled with the kinetic theory of granular flow. The two-equation standard k-epsilon model is used to describe the turbulent quantities. The simulation predictions are compared with experimentally observed data on volume fraction, bed pressure drop and bed expansion ratio. The results of simulations are found to be in close agreement with the experimental observations, implying that computational fluid dynamics (CFD) can be used for the design of an efficient bench-scale catalytic fluidized bed reactor.