Predicting dust emissions – Experimental study compared to coupled DEM/CFD simulations using a reference test bulk material

Abstract The awareness of dust emissions is crucial regarding safe industrial processes, environmental protection and health care. For this purpose, closely linked experimental and numerical investigations are performed. This work presents the results of an experimental study which is used for the calibration of a modelling framework based on the Discrete Element Method (DEM) coupled with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and applied for the calculation of dust emissions for predictive purposes. The key objective of the approach is to come up with a dust source term which enables to describe and to quantify the release of particle emissions. For the presented experimental study, a wind tunnel and a rotating drum setup, which cover various handling types of bulk materials, are used in order to gain data about parameters having an impact on the dust release. The special feature of the investigations is the use of a reference test bulk material which represents a bulk material in its generally main fractions, the fine and the coarse material, keeping the discrepancy between experiments and simulations low. With the help of the experimental results the calibration of the simulation model was carried out and followed by a comparison.