Numerical Study of Inert Fluidization of a Bubbling Fluidized Bed

Gasifier

Myrian Alexandra Laban-More2, Juan Carlos López-Espinoza2, Elder Mendoza Orbegoso1*,

Daniel Marcelo-Aldana1, Raul La Madrid2,
Department, Organisation, Address, City, Country (Italic, Times new roman, font size 11)
*Corresponding Author E-mail: eldermendoza@unitru.edu.pe

ABSTRACT

This work consists of the study of the fluid-dynamic behaviour of a bubbling fluidized bed, which
operates with alumina and bauxite as inert materials, subjected to different gas inlet velocities from a
fixed bed height that ranges from 0.2 to 0.4 m, in order to determine an optimum air inlet operating
speed range for a Piura University Gasifier (UDEP-Gasifier). For this, a technique that allows to
understand in depth the fluid dynamics of this process through its modelling and simulation, is through
the use of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), which is applied through the ANSYS-CFX and
ANSYS-Fluent software’s. These allow solving the mass and energy conservation equations for both
the solid and the gaseous phases.

The CFD model implementation was validated through comparison with the experimental results of a
fluidized bed of sand (Zhang, 2011). Then, the fluidization of the alumina bed was simulated with six
different speeds, in order to identify: the pressure drop of the fluidized bed, the characteristics of the
bed for each speed and the optimal range of operating speeds of the UDEP-Gasifier; and thus, to be
able to estimate the behaviour of the bed of the UDEP-Gasifier prototype in an inert condition

Keywords: Biomass; Minimum Fluidization Velocity, Computational Fluid Dynamics; Bubbling

Fluidized Bed

Biography:

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