Zhulin Yuan

Three-dimensional Simulation of Gas/Solid Flow in Spout-fluid Beds with Kinetic Theory of Granular Flow

Abstract A three-dimensional Eulerian multiphase model, with closure law according to the kinetic theory of granular flow, was used to study the gas/solid flow behaviors in spout-fluid beds. The influences of the coefficient of restitution due to non-ideal particle collisions on the simulated results were tested. It is demonstrated that the simulated result is strongly affected by the coefficient of restitution. Comparison of simulations with experiments in a small spout-fluid bed showed that an appropriate coefficient of restitution of 0.93 was necessary to simulate the flow characteristics in an underdesigned large size of spout-fluid bed coal gasifier with diameter of 1m and height of 6m. The internal jet and gas/solid flow patterns at different operating conditions were obtained. The simulations show that an optimal gas/solid flow pattern for coal gasification is found when the spouting gas flow rate is equal to the fluidizing gas flow rate and the total of them is two and a half times the minimum fluidizing gas flow rate. Besides, the radial distributions of particle velocity and gas velocity show similar tendencies; the radial distributions of particle phase pressure due to particle collisions and the particle pseudo-temperature corresponding to the macroscopic kinetic energy of the random particle motion also show similar tendencies. These indicate that both gas drag force and particle collisions dominate the movement of particles.

Ice Slurry Formation in a Cocurrent Liquid-Liquid Flow *

A new technique for ice slurry production was explored. Multiple small water-drops were formed in an- other immiscible chilled liquid by a single-nozzled atomizer and frozen in the fluidized bed by direct contact heat transfer. Experiments were conducted to investigate the dynamic behaviors of the ice crystal making system. The results demonstrate that the ice crystals could be produced continuously and stably in the vertical bed with the cir- culating coolant of initial temperature below -5°C. The size distribution of the ice crystals appears non-uniform, but is more similar and more uniform at lower oil flow rate. The mean ice crystal size rests seriously with the jet veloc- ity and the oil flow rate. It decreases with decreasing the oil flow rate, and reaches the maximum at an intermediate jet velocity at about 16.5 m·s -1 . The ice crystal size is also closely related to the phenomenon of drop-coalescing, which can be alleviated considerably by reducing the flow rate or lowering the temperature of the carrier oil. How- ever, optimization of liquid-liquid atomization is a more effective approach to produce fine ice crystals of desired size. Keywords ice slurry, drop-coalescing, ice crystal size distribution, liquid-liquid atomization

Number Concentration of Cylindrical Particles in a Fluidized Bed

Abstract In this study, a three-dimensional model based on RANS, slender-body theory and Newton-Euler dynamics is established to study the number concentration, one of the most important fluidization characteristics of cylindrical particles. Also, the effects of interaction between cylindrical particles are taken into account by introducing the rigid collision dynamics. To validate the model, the fluidization experiments of cylindrical particles in a cold-state fluidized bed are carried out. The number concentration characteristics of cylindrical particles are obtained from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation. It is found that cylindrical particles arriving at the exit of the riser the earliest come from the near-wall regions, the horizontal transfer of so many cylindrical particles from the radial centre regions to the near-wall regions is evident. Meanwhile, there is no distinct relationship between the number concentration and inlet wind velocity.

Modeling and simulation of drying characteristics on flexible filamentous particles in rotary dryers

Experiments were conducted to demonstrate the effects of the drum wall temperature on the heat and mass transfer in rotary dryers. The drying characteristics of flexible filamentous particles in rotary dryers were further explored. In addition, the inlet and outlet temperatures and moisture contents of granular particles were measured. As a result, the good agreement between the simulations and experiments verified the rationale and feasibility of the numerical method. Therefore, the approach was adopted to evaluate the temperature and moisture content of wet granular particles in a rotary dryer in different conditions, for instance, drum wall temperature and rotational speed. The results revealed that the higher drum wall temperature led to hotter particles with lower outlet moisture content. Conversely, the higher rotational speed resulted in cooler particles with higher outlet moisture content due to the decrease of residence time in the rotary dryer.

Experimental Study on Heat and Mass Transfer of Millet in a Fixed Furnace

Abstract A series of experiments on the heat and mass transfer of millet particles are conducted in order to demonstrate the effects on drying characteristics of particles in this work. Experimental results illustrate that thermal conductivity between particles is significantly influenced by temperature and moisture content of millet particles. The temperature of particles in axial and radial direction increases because of the increase of inner wall temperature and decreases with the increase of air flow velocity. Moreover, the moisture content of particles near the inner wall has experienced a significant drop with the increase of inner wall temperature. As a consequence, the increase of air flow velocity results from the decrease of particles moisture content and drying rate of particles increases due to the increase of air flow velocity. Furthermore, the accumulated height of particles has barely influenced on the drying characteristics of millet particles.