Numerical Analysis and Experimental Verification on Flow Characteristics of a Pressurized Fluidized Bed System

Abstract

The pressurized fluidized bed technology is recently shown to be a most promising technology for energy conversion and carbon capture. In the present work, two-phase flow characteristics of a laboratory-scale bubbling fluidized bed (BFB) system have been examined numerically under pressurized cold flow conditions. The BFB hydrodynamics is presented by axial pressure distributions and radial particle volume fractions. Moreover, the influence of drag models on minimum fluidization and bubble formation is studied using two different drag models, namely Wen-Yu/Ergun and EMMS–Yang, at both atmospheric and elevated pressure conditions. The numerical results are validated with a series of pressure drop and axial pressure measurements conducted at three different pressure conditions. The experimentally observed minimum fluidization velocity results are also compared with the theoretical correlations found in the literature. Good agreement has been found between experiments and numerical predictions.