Estudo numérico da influência das propriedades físicas granulares aplicado ao fenômeno de fluidização

Abstract

The operation of equipment in a fluidized bed regime is widely used in the chemical industry, as it provides high mixing between the granular and fluid phases, enabling the intensification of heat and mass transfer rates. It is widely employed in the petroleum industry, for catalytic cracking of heavy hydrocarbons, as well as in the pharmaceutical industry for drying, granulation, and coating processes. Due to the inherent complexity of the interactions between the granular and fluid phases, computational studies have been developed in recent decades to understand the internal dynamics of fluidized bed equipment. The objective of this study is to analyze the fluidization efficiency, employing a central composite design to verify the influence of granular physical properties, by varying the diameter between 18µm to 888µm and specific mass from 1060𝑘𝑔⁄𝑚3 to 7480𝑘𝑔⁄𝑚3. For this purpose, CFD simulations were evaluated, observing the fluid-dynamic behavior of particles according to their classifications based on the Geldart diagram. The fluidized bed simulations were carried out using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) with the OpenFOAM v.10 free and open-source software, applying the Eulerian approach in the gas and granular phases. The visualization software PARAVIEW 5.11.0 and the Python programming language were also employed for the quantitative analysis of data from the simulations. This approach allowed for a deeper understanding of the physical behavior of the fluidized bed - through the variation of granular material parameters - with an emphasis on the quality of fluidization and the selection of appropriate metrics for its quantification, as well as the development of mathematical models for the evaluation of minimum fluidization velocity and terminal velocity.