Statistical Analysis of CFD Simulations in a Spouted Bed

Statistical Analysis of CFD Simulations in a Spouted Bed

Spouted beds are widely used as gas-solid contactors in various physical and chemical processes. In order to improve the design of spouted beds for efficient gas-solid contact, a better understanding of the complex flow field of granular solids is required. In this paper, numerical modeling using FLUENT 6.3 commercial software was utilized to study the flow in a slot-rectangular spouted bed. Two-phase gas-solid flows in the bed were simulated with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique using the two-phase Eulerian-Eulerian granular model. Two-dimensional computer simulations were performed to predict different flow regimes. The diagnostics of flow regime transitions have been provided by the analysis of absolute pressure fluctuations. Clear differences have been observed in the calculated mean value, standard deviation, maximum amplitude, skewness, and kurtosis of the absolute pressure fluctuations for different superficial gas velocities and bed heights. Analysis of variance has been used to examine various data with different flow regimes. The local minimums of the calculated values of correlation coefficient and covariance reveal occurrence of flow transitions