Dinâmica das partículas em leito fluidizado circulante

Abstract

This thesis is focused on the particle phase dynamics in a circulating fluidized bed riser (CFB). Fluidized beds are commonly encountered in many industrial applications such as drying and coating of particles, polimerizations, combustion and gasification of coal and biomass, gasoil fluid catalytic cracking. Given the importance of the physical understanding about CFBs, in this work experiments and simulations are carried out to explore, describe and predict the upward gas-solid flow in pilot scale. Therefore, the Pilot Unit of Riser and Cyclones was designed and built, as well as its control and optical measuring systems, the last one by using Phase Doppler Anemometry (PDA). Besides that, the flow was solved by Computational Fluid Dynamics, as the second pillar on which this thesis is based, through the solution of an Eulerian-Lagrangian unsteady point-particle model, with inter-particles collisions and impact on rough walls, implemented on the in-house code UNSCYFL3D. The results from both experiments and simulations have shown the macro- and meso-scale structures formation, caused by geometrical and fluid dynamics effects, respectively. Particle phase flow segregation occurs near the particle inlet and also recirculation at the top of the riser, due to the T shape outlet. The PDA results show the core-annulus structure formation from the bottom of the riser in the higher mass loadings, the tendency of radial and axial segregation of particle diameters and the particle deposition near the riser wall, where the discrete phase has higher velocity fluctuations. On the other hand, the simulation results show little influence of Saffman and Magnus forces over the particles flow, however great impact of the roughness wall model and of the turbophoresis effect. About the model validation, good agreement is found mainly to particle concentration at the riser centre and to the particle phase axial velocity.