A CFD Comparative Study of Bubbling Fluidized Bed Behavior with Thermal Effects Using the Open-Source Platforms MFiX and OpenFOAM

ANDRÉS REYES URRUTIA; CÉSAR M. VENIER; JAVIER MARIANI; NORBERTO NIGRO; ROSA RODRIGUEZ; GERMÁN MAZZA

FLUIDS

MDPI - Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute

Lugar: Basel, Switzerland; Año: 2022 vol. 7 p. 1 - 16

This work studies the performance of twoopen-source CFD codes, OpenFOAM and MFiX, to address bubbling fluidized bed system at different temperature andheat transfer conditions. Both codes are used to predicttwo parameters that are relevant for the design of fluidized units: the minimum fluidization velocity as a function of thetemperature of the bed and wall-to-bed heat transfer coeffcient from a lateral wall and from internaltubes. Although the CFD solvers are structuraly similar, there are some key differences (availablemodels, meshing techniques, and balance formulations) that are often translatedinto differences in the felds prediction. The computational resultsare compared between both codes and against theexperimental data. The minimum fluidization velocity can be correctly predicted with both codes atdifferent temperatures while, in general, for the heat transfer and the fluidization patterns, MFiX shows slightly moreaccurate results compared to OpenFOAM but with lowversatility for meshing curved geometries which might translate intohigher computational costs for the same level ofaccuracy