Hydrodynamic and heat transfer study of a fluidized bed by discrete particle simulations

A numerical simulation study was carried out to study the combined thermal behavior and hydrodynamics of a pseudo-2D fluidized bed using a computational fluid dynamics-discrete element method (CFD-DEM). To mimic the effect of heterogeneous exothermic reactions, a constant heat source was implemented in the particle energy equation. The effects of superficial gas velocity, bed height and heat source distribution were analyzed with the aid of averaged volume fraction and temperature distributions and velocity profiles. It was found that both the gas superficial velocity and the bed aspect ratio have a profound influence on fluidization behavior and temperature distributions.