Numerical Simulation of Gas and Particle Flow in a Rotating Fluidized Bed

Fluidized-bed reactors are widely used in chemical and biochemical processes, including polymerization (Kunii, D. G.; Levenspiel, O. Fluidization Engineering; Wiley:  New York, 1969). To enhance the efficiency of the fluidized-bed reactors, more flexibility in controlling the residence time of particles of different sizes, particularly very fine particles, is needed. To achieve this goal, we studied gas and particle flow patterns in a vertical rotating fluidized bed (RFB). We limited our study to the quasi-three-dimensional simulation of an isothermal RFB with constant particle size and no chemical reaction to examine the predictability of a computational fluid dynamics approach to the analysis of RFB systems. We used 200-μm particles (with properties similar to polyethylene) as the particulate phase and air as the gas phase in our simulation. The instantaneous velocity, volume fraction, and pressure drop profiles for the gas and particulate phases were calculated. Simulation results showed that the parti...