CFD-DEM investigation of flow and heat transfer characteristics in a directly irradiated fluidized bed

The directly irradiated fluidized bed reactor has gained widespread attention due to its strong heat and mass transfer performance. However, there is still a lack of in-depth understanding of the gas–solid flow characteristics, heat transfer mechanisms, and flow pattern evolution in the fluidized bed. To address this, the computational fluid dynamics-discrete element method (CFD-DEM) was employed in this study to investigate the correlation between the flow pattern and the heat transfer path. The simulation results show that increasing the superficial gas velocity from the minimum fluidization velocity (umf) to 1.4umf induces a circulation pattern that significantly reduces the overheating phenomenon, resulting in a 40.52% decrease in the maximum particle temperature and a 74.59% decrease in the temperature standard deviation. The particle temperature increases in the top heat-collecting region, followed by thermal conduction and convection transferring the energy to low-temperature particles and fluid in the near-wall and bottom regions. As the superficial gas velocity increases, the proportion and frequency of particles entering the heat-collecting region increase, resulting in a more uniform temperature distribution within the bed. Taking into account factors such as heat transfer characteristics and fluidization energy consumption, a fluidization velocity of 1.6umf is recommended as the optimum operating condition for particles in this work, as it ensures a uniform temperature distribution within the bed and minimizes convective and radiative losses.