Modeling of the Spray Zone for Particle Wetting in a Fluidized Bed
AUTHOR(S)
G. Niederreiter, L. Fries, M. Heine, S.Antonyuk, S.Heinrich, S.Palzer
PUBLISHER
Wiley-VCH
SOURCE
Chemie Ingenieur Technik
YEAR
ABSTRACT
In a spray agglomeration process the particle wetting influences the agglomerate growth and particle dynamics in the granulator. The mass of binder liquid that is deposited on single particles affects the amount of energy dissipation during particle contacts. For the agglomeration of colliding particles the whole impact energy has to be dissipated due to viscous and capillary adhesion forces in the liquid film and plastic deformation of the material. Therefore, a detailed knowledge of the particle wetting is necessary to model the agglomeration process. This contribution uses a coupled DEM-CFD approach to describe the spray zone of a two-fluid nozzle in a fluidized bed agglomerator. Droplets modeled as discrete elements showed the formation of a spray zone with a conical shape. Simulations of the spray zone and the wetting of single particles are in good agreement with experimental results.
KEYWORDS
Computational fluid dynamics, Discrete element method, Droplets, Fluidized bed, Particle wettin, Spray