Progress in CFD Simulations of Fluidized Beds for Chemical and Energy Process Engineering

Gas-solid fluidized beds have drawn the attention of engineers and researchers as an effective technology for a large variety of applications, and numerical simulations can play an increasingly relevant role in their development and optimization. Although real-time simulations will require substantial progress in the accuracy, capability, and efficiency of numerical models, future developments could herald a new era of so-called virtual reality for process engineering, featuring interactive simulations instead of stepwise experimental scale-up studies and cost-intensive empirical trial-and-error methods. This review paper provides a significant body of knowledge on the developments of CFD mathematical models and how they can be applied in various fluidized-bed systems. The review is divided into three main parts. The first part (Mathematical modeling) describes the state-of-the-art numerical models of gas-solid flows (two-fluid model, soft-sphere model, hard-sphere model, and hybrid model) and their fundamental assumptions (gas-solid, particle-particle, and particle-wall interactions). Special attention is devoted to the forces and the moments of the forces acting on particles, the parcel modeling, the homogeneous and structure-dependent drag models, the non-spherical particle models, the heat and mass transfer, and the turbulence. The second part of this review (State-of-the-art studies) is dedicated to the body of literature, focusing on how these numerical models are applied to fluidized-bed systems used in chemical and energy process engineering. Relevant works on simulation in the literature up to 2021 are analyzed, complemented by an overview of popularly used commercial and in-house simulation codes. Particular attention is paid to those studies that include measurement validation, to achieve a fundamentally competitive comparison between the different numerical models. The pros and cons of applying CFD models to fluidized-bed systems are studied and assessed based on the existing body of literature. The third part of this review (Conclusion and prospects) highlights current research trends, identifying research gaps and opportunities for future ways, in which CFD can be applied to fluidized beds for energetic and chemical processes.