Effect of Wall Boundary Conditions and Mesh Refinement on Numerical Simulation of Pressurized Dense Fluidized Bed for Polymerization Reactor

The effect of the mesh refinement and the solid phase boundary condition are investigated for numerical simulation of dense pressurized fluidized bed. Two fluidized beds have been considered: a laboratory-scale device and a pilot-scale facility. A relation is proposed to scale-up the numerical simulation and preserving the spatial resolution accuracy. As expected the boundary condition of the solid phase modifies the behaviour of the fluidized bed. Compared to free-slip wall boundary condition, a no-slip condition improves the numerical predictions with respect to available experimental data