A computational investigation of transient heat transfer in pneumatic transport of granular particles

The Distinct Element Method (DEM) has been employed to model a range of gas–solids flow systems such as solids flow in hoppers, gas–solids pipe flow and particulate fluidized bed. But little has been reported on the application of this technique to heat transfer in gas–solids flows. This paper describes a numerical model for gas–solids two-phase flow with heat transfer in pneumatic transport pipes. The gas phase is modelled as a continuum and the solids phase is modelled by DEM. Convective heat transfer between gas and particles and between gas and pipe wall, and conductive heat transfer between particles and between particles and pipe wall are modelled. The influence of particle concentration on the predicted performance of the system has been compared with experimental data. This comparison has shown a good agreement between the DEM simulation and experiment for both pressure drop and pipe wall temperature profile at developed flow region.