Study of a hydrofluidization system using computational fluid dynamics and a discrete element method. I: Flow field and velocity profiles

ORONA JD; ZORRILLA, SE; PERALTA, JM

Florianópolis

Congreso; XX Congresso Brasileiro de Engenharia Química; 2014

Associacao Basileira de Engenharia Química

Hydrofluidization (HF) is a method of chilling and freezing of foods that pumps a refrigerating liquid upwards through orifices into a vessel creating submerged jets and thus results in extremely high surface transfer phenomena. The objective was to model the flow field and the velocity profiles of spheres in a HF system using computational fluid dynamics and a discrete element method. The HF system consisted in a cylindrical vessel of 100‒mm diameter and 100‒mm height and a perforated plate with orifices of 3‒mm diameter. The samples were 13 potato spheres of 10‒mm diameter. The operative variables were temperature (‒5°C, ‒10°C), distance among the orifices (10 mm, 20 mm) and average velocity of the fluid at the orifices (0.59 m/s, 1.18 m/s). The results are promising to obtain relevant information about the momentum transfer and the dynamics of samples being processed within a HF system.