Pressure Fluctuation Analysis in Gas-Solid Fluidized Beds Using CFD Simulations

Author(s):  
Mirka Deza ◽  
Francine Battaglia

Reliable computational methods provide valuable insight into gas-solid flow processes and can be used as a design tool. Of particular interest is the hydrodynamics of a binary mixture of sand-biomass in a fluidized bed. Our study interprets the hydrodynamic states of a fluidized bed by analyzing the local pressure fluctuations of beds of sand and a mixture of cotton stalks and sand over long time periods. Standard deviation of pressure drop will determine different fluidization regimes at inlet gas velocities ranging from 2 to 9 times the minimum fluidization velocity. Bode plots will present the pressure spectra and reveal characteristic frequencies that describe the bed hydrodynamics for different fluidization regimes. This works contribution will present CFD as a useful tool to perform pressure fluctuation analysis, the study of pressure fluctuations in the turbulent regime and the analysis of a binary mixture using CFD.

2013 ◽  
Vol 135 (10) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirka Deza ◽  
Francine Battaglia

Reliable computational methods can provide valuable insight into gas–solid flow processes and can be used as a design tool. Of particular interest in this study is the hydrodynamics of a binary mixture of sand–biomass in a fluidized bed. Biomass particulates vary in size, shape, and density, which inevitably alter how well the particles fluidize. Our study will use computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to interpret the hydrodynamic states of a fluidized bed by analyzing the local pressure fluctuations of beds of sand and a binary mixture of cotton stalks and sand over long time periods. Standard deviation of pressure fluctuations will be compared with experimental data to determine different fluidization regimes at inlet gas velocities ranging from two to nine times the minimum fluidization velocity. We will use Bode plots to present the pressure spectra and reveal characteristic frequencies that describe the bed hydrodynamics for different fluidization regimes. This work will present CFD as a useful tool to perform that analysis. Other important contributions include the study of pressure fluctuations of a fluidized bed in bubbling, slugging, and turbulent regimes, and the analysis of a binary mixture using CFD.


2016 ◽  
Vol 284 ◽  
pp. 640-649 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesús Gómez-Hernández ◽  
Daniel Serrano ◽  
Antonio Soria-Verdugo ◽  
Sergio Sánchez-Delgado

Author(s):  
Vesa V. Walle´n

Pressure measurements were conducted in a two-dimensional hot atmospheric bubbling fluidized bed reactor in the laboratory of Energy and Process Engineering at Tampere University of Technology. A set of six fast pressure transducers was used to detect the rapid pressure fluctuations inside the bubbling bed of the reactor. These pressure transducers were placed both vertically and horizontally into the reactor. From these measurements it was found that the vertical pressure fluctuation took place at the same time at different levels of the bed. Also the same fluctuation could be seen under the air distributor. The horizontal pressure fluctuation was found to vary both by place and time. At the bottom part of the bed the highest pressure peaks was found at centre of the bed. Most of the time there was a pressure gradient the highest pressure being in the centre of the bed. This gradient creates horizontal flow of gases from middle to the sides. The velocity of this flow varies with the size of the pressure gradient. The opposite effect can be found in the upper part of the bed. The highest pressure was no more in the middle part of the bed. Instead, it was found to be between the centre of the bed and left and right walls. The pressure was low at the walls but also rather low at the middle of the bed. There must be flow towards the walls and to the centre axis. These pressure fluctuations can provide an explanation for the well-known “wandering plume” effect. They can also give a tool to better describe the mixing inside a bubbling fluidized bed. This kind of tool is needed when biomass combustion is modelled in bubbling fluidized bed.


Author(s):  
Yong Zhang ◽  
Baosheng Jin ◽  
Wenqi Zhong

Fluidization, mixing and segregation of a biomass-sand mixture in a 3D gas-fluidized bed have been investigated by means of visual observation, pressure fluctuation analysis and the bed-frozen method. Three types of mixtures are considered, in which biomass is a thin long stalk, and sand belongs to the Geldart B category. Experiments are carried out in a segmented fluidized bed equipped with multiple pressure transducers. Three initial packing conditions and two experiment procedures are used. The fluidization velocity varies to cover a wide range. Results show that in the local fluidization region, the mixing and segregation patterns are sensitive to the initial packing condition. In the case of a fully segregated state with biomass at the bottom, the bed inversion can be significantly observed due to the great segregation tendency of biomass. Further analyses indicate that the mixing ratio exerts a subtle influence on the competition between mixing and segregation by disturbing the coalescence and break-up of the bubble. In addition, the pressure fluctuation signal proves to be helpful in understanding the dynamic features of the phenomenology.


Processes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
pp. 890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yusif A. Alghamdi ◽  
Zhengbiao Peng ◽  
Caimao Luo ◽  
Zeyad Almutairi ◽  
Behdad Moghtaderi ◽  
...  

This study systematically investigates the pressure fluctuation in the riser of a dual interconnected circulating fluidized bed (CFB) representing a 10 kWth cold-flow model (CFM) of a chemical-looping combustion (CLC) system. Specifically, a single-species system (SSS) and a binary-mixtures system (BMS) of particles with different sizes and densities were utilized. The pressure fluctuation was analyzed using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) method. The effect of introducing a second particle, changing the inventory, composition (i.e., 5, 10 to 20 wt.%), particle size ratio, and fluidization velocity were investigated. For typical SSS experiments, the results were similar to those scarcely reported in the literature, where the pressure fluctuation intensity was influenced by varying the initial operating conditions. The pressure fluctuations of BMS were investigated in detail and compared with those obtained from SSS experiments. BMS exhibited different behaviour; it had intense pressure fluctuation in the air reactor and in the riser when compared to SSS experiments. The standard deviation (SD) of the pressure fluctuation was found to be influenced by the fluidization regime and initial operating conditions, while the power spectrum density (PSD) values were more sensitive to the presence of the particles with the higher terminal velocity in the binary mixture.


2012 ◽  
Vol 538-541 ◽  
pp. 610-615
Author(s):  
Jun Xu ◽  
Xing Xing Chen ◽  
Gui Lei Wang ◽  
Yao Dong Wei

The experiment is carried out in a 13-meter-high circulating fluidized bed(CFB) to investigate gas-solid two-phase flow by pressure sensor. The axial pressure and pressure fluctuation are measured in different solid mass fluxes. With the solid mass flux increasing, pressure gradually increases, and pressure gradually decreases along the riser upwards. The characteristic of pressure fluctuation in the riser is analyzed, which indicates that pressure fluctuation in the riser originates from the inlet. The intensity of the pressure fluctuation decreases along the riser upwards. This pressure fluctuation is composed of two types: one is of low frequency and high amplitude, which is resulted from unstable feeding to the riser and keeps coherent along the axial direction. And the other is of high frequency and low amplitude, which is the result of a variety of factors, such as cluster movement, gas-solid interaction and gas velocity fluctuation.


Author(s):  
J. Ruud van Ommen ◽  
Robert F. Mudde

In gas-solid fluidized beds, the distribution of the particles typically varies both in time and space. Since the gas-solids distribution and its variation have a strong influence on the performance of a fluidized bed for a given process, it is very important to accurately measure the gas-solids or voidage distribution. This paper reviews techniques for measuring the voidage distribution in gas-solid fluidized beds, with a focus on the developments during the last ten years. We will treat subsequently direct visualisation, tomography, optical probes, capacitance probes, and pressure measurements.Dense gas-solids flows are typically opaque to visible light. This makes optical techniques only of limited use in dense gas-solids flow. However, direct visualization can be useful for very dilute systems, pseudo 2-D beds, and the outer layer of dense, 3-D systems. Tomography is frequently used to obtain the voidage distribution in a horizontal cross-section of the bed. Electric capacitance tomography is fast, but its spatial resolution is limited and image reconstruction is still troublesome. Although some steps forward have been made, research is continuing at this point. For nuclear (X-ray and gamma-ray) tomography, the image reconstruction is much easier and the spatial resolution better, but its temporal resolution is typically much lower. Therefore, research efforts for nuclear tomography are mainly aimed at increasing the measurement frequency. Optical probes determine the voidage as a function of time in a small measurement volume, either by the degree of reflection or by the degree of transmission of a light bundle. Capacitance probes determine the voidage as a function of time in a small measurement volume by measuring the dielectric permittivity of the gas-solids suspension in the measurement volume. Both optical and capacitance probe techniques are reasonably well-developed; the current research effort spent at improving them seems limited, especially for capacitance probes. Time-averaged pressure measurements are commonly used to determine the average bed density and bed height. By sampling the local pressure at a sufficiently high frequency (typically in the order of 200 Hz), much more information can be obtained about the fluidized bed hydrodynamics. However, obtaining quantitative voidage data from pressure fluctuations measurement remains a difficult task; in-bed pressure fluctuation (and acoustic) measurements are mostly used to determine changes in the voidage dynamics and distribution.


2012 ◽  
Vol 224 ◽  
pp. 69-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunzhen Yang ◽  
Yufeng Duan ◽  
Haitao Hu ◽  
Changsui Zhao

Author(s):  
Qianqian Li ◽  
Shiyang Li ◽  
Peng Wu ◽  
Bin Huang ◽  
Dazhuan Wu

AbstractDouble-suction centrifugal pumps have been applied extensively in many areas, and the significance of pressure fluctuations inside these pumps with large power is becoming increasingly important. In this study, a double-suction centrifugal pump with a high-demand for vibration and noise was redesigned by increasing the flow uniformity at the impeller discharge, implemented by combinations of more than two parameters. First, increasing the number of the impeller blades was intended to enhance the bounding effect that the blades imposed on the fluid. Subsequently, increasing the radial gap between the impeller and volute was applied to reduce the rotor-stator interaction. Finally, the staggered arrangement was optimized to weaken the efficacy of the interference superposition. Based on numerical simulation, the steady and unsteady characteristics of the pump models were calculated. From the fluctuation analysis in the frequency domain, the dimensionless pressure fluctuation amplitude at the blade passing frequency and its harmonics, located on the monitoring points in the redesigned pumps (both with larger radial gap), are reduced a lot. Further, in the volute of the model with new impellers staggered at 12°, the average value for the dimensionless pressure fluctuation amplitude decreases to 6% of that in prototype pump. The dimensionless root-mean-square pressure contour on the mid-span of the impeller tends to be more uniform in the redesigned models (both with larger radial gap); similarly, the pressure contour on the mid-section of the volute presents good uniformity in these models, which in turn demonstrating a reduction in the pressure fluctuation intensity. The results reveal the mechanism of pressure fluctuation reduction in a double-suction centrifugal pump, and the results of this study could provide a reference for pressure fluctuation reduction and vibration performance reinforcement of double-suction centrifugal pumps and other pumps.


2016 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Ondrej Burian ◽  
Vaclav Dostal ◽  
Ladislav Vesely

This paper deals with identification of parameters of simple pool boiling in a vertical rectangular channel by analysis of pressure fluctuation. In this work is introduced a small experimental facility about 9 kW power, which was used for simulation of pool boiling phenomena and creation of steam-water volume. Several pressure fluctuations measurements and differential pressure fluctuations measurements at warious were carried out. Main changed parameters were power of heaters and hydraulics resistance of channel internals. Measured pressure data was statistically analysed and compared with goal to find dependencies between parameters of two-phase flow and statistical properties of pressure fluctuation. At the end of this paper are summarized final results and applicability of this method for parameters determination of two phase flow for pool boiling conditions at ambient pressure.


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