A multiphase particle-in-cell method for simulating particle dispersion in fluidized beds

Multiphase particle-in-cell methods (MPPIC) provide an efficient alternative to bridge the spatial scales between computational-fluid-dynamics-discrete-element-methods (CFD-DEM) and two-fluid models for fluidized beds. Because of their ability to track each particle while modeling their interactions on a background grid, MPPIC methods can simulate the growth of entire bubbles in large complex geometries but also capture physics at the particle scale. However, MPPIC requires the selection of model specific parameters to correctly predict the rheology of the particle phase, and it is not yet clear how these parameters influence the models’ ability to predict fluidized-bed particle dispersion, which plays a pivotal role in heat exchangers and reactors. This study presents an MPPIC method capable of capturing particle dispersion via particle volume fraction smoothing and least-squares gradient reconstruction of Lagrangian fields. This article describes how particle dispersion can be measured from narrow-channel, fluidized bed experiments and demonstrates the effectiveness of an MPPIC simulation at tracking measurements and predicting particle dispersion in narrow-channel fluidized beds with similar or superior accuracy compared to other methods.