Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.52, No.33, 11275-11281, 2013
Multiscale Simulation of Agglomerate Breakage in Fluidized Beds
In this contribution a multiscale simulation strategy is proposed which is able to simulate an industrial scale fluidized bed spray agglomeration process considering the breakage of agglomerates. A set of novel simulation approaches and hierarchically distributed models were developed and implemented into the multiscale simulation environment for solids processes. The population balance model (PBM) was used for the simulation of the global production process on the macroscale. On the microscale the coupling between discrete element method (DEM) and the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) system was employed to calculate the particle dynamics in the granulator. The material-based parameters for the PBM, such as breakage probability and breakage function, were derived from the process description on the lowest hierarchical scale, where the agglomerate was described as a system of primary particles bonded by a solid binder.