Studies of Fluidised Beds of Cohesive Particles

Contact:
Prof Jonathan Seville
Chemical Engineering
School of Engineering
The University of Birmingham
Edgbaston, Birmingham
B15 2TT, United Kingdom

Email: informatics-crn-enquiries[at]cs.bham.ac.uk
Website: http://www.eng.bham.ac.uk/chemical/people/seville.htm

Fluidised bed reactors are used in many industrial chemical-manufacturing processes. Computer-aided design is now the norm in industry but conventional software used is not applicable to particulate processes in which cohesive forces are important.

For optimal reactivity it is desirable that the particles are as small as possible in order to enhance the reaction rates due to high surface area per unit volume. There is, however, a limit to the reduction in particle size due to the increasing significance of van der Waals forces that encourage adhesion/cohesion between particles and thereby inhibit fluidisation.

The main objective of the research is to carry out numerical and experimental investigation of fluidised beds of cohesive particles in order to elucidate the physical/mechanistic explanations for bed expansion, bubble instabilities and the effects of increasing the gas pressure. This will be achieved through Grid-enabling the simulation software, thereby enabling millions of particles to be simulated.