Atmospheric Bubbling Fluidized Bed Risers: Effect of Cone Angle on Fluid Dynamics and Heat Transfer

Abstract In this paper, a comparative study of fluid flow behavior and thermal characteristics of sand particles has been carried out numerically and experimentally in bubbling fluidized beds for five-cone angles of the riser wall having 0 deg, 5 deg, 10 deg, 15 deg, and 20 deg. An Eulerian model with a k–ε turbulence model is used to explore the numerical analysis, and the findings are compared to those of the experiments. For the study, the inlet air velocity is fixed at 1.5 m/s with sand particles filled up to 30 cm to maintain bubbling conditions in the risers. The results indicate that increasing the cone angle up to 10 deg while maintaining the amount of bed materials constant leads to a reduction in pressure drop. The expansion of particles along the riser is observed to decrease with the increase in the cone angle up to 10 deg. The radial solid volume fraction profile transforms to a U shape from the W-type profile as the cone angle increases up to 10 deg. Correspondingly, the solid velocity is found to have an inverted U-type and W-shaped profile for the risers. The granular temperature is also found to increase with a decrease in the solid percentage at any location. The average bed temperature, interphase, and bed-to-wall heat transfer coefficient at a location of 10 cm axial height also increase with the cone angle increase up to 10 deg. As a result, the conical riser, when designed with a greater cone angle up to 10 deg, exhibits more efficiency in terms of heat transfer characteristics. The 3D simulation results are in strong concurrence with the experimental results in all investigations.