Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.52, No.1, 187-198, 2013
Simulation of Mono- and Bidisperse Gas-Particle Flow in a Riser with a Third-Order Quadrature-Based Moment Method
Gas-particle flows can be described by a kinetic equation for the particle phase coupled with the Navier Stokes equations for the fluid phase through a momentum exchange term. The direct solution of the kinetic equation is prohibitive for most applications due to the high dimensionality of the space of independent variables. A viable alternative is represented by moment methods, where moments of the velocity distribution function are transported in space and time. In this work, a fully coupled third-order, quadrature-based moment method is applied to the simulation of mono- and bidisperse gas-particle flows in the riser of a circulating fluidized bed. Gaussian quadrature formulas are used to model the unclosed terms in the moment transport equations. A Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) collision model is used in the monodisperse case, while the full Boltzmann integral is adopted in the bidisperse case. The predicted values of mean local phase velocities, rms velocities, and particle volume fractions are compared with the Euler-Lagrange simulations and experimental data from the literature. The local values of the time-average Stokes, Mach, and Knudsen numbers predicted by the simulation are reported and analyzed to justify the adoption of high-order moment methods as opposed to models based on hydrodynamic closures.