Computational Fluid Dynamics Study

The gyratory bed is a highly viable piece of equipment due to its efficient fluid-particle contact and high heat and mass transfer rates in industrial operations. An efficient way of studying the operating behaviour of the equipment at lower costs is to use computational tools whose function is to verify and analyse the best performance of this equipment in the face of a requested operation. One of these tools is Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), as it is able to simulate the characteristics of the system with good correlation to the real process. The aim of this work was to verify, by means of CFD simulation, the fluid dynamic behaviour of a conventional gas-solid gusher bed on a bench scale. The simulations showed a profile of the fluid-dynamic flow dynamics inside the bed, which was established by measuring the pressure drop in the bed and the gas velocity for different types of particles. The fluidisation operating regimes of the bed were obtained from the porosity profiles generated and the position of the particles in the bed was obtained from the position-velocity graphs.