Simulation of Fuel Mixing in Fluidized Beds using a Combined Tracking Technique

This paper presents an Eulerian-Eulerian-Lagrangian (E-E-L) numerical method to track a limited number of fuel particles in a bulk of inert particles in a gas-solid fluidized bed. The gas and the inert phases are treated as the interpenetrating continua and resolved within the Eulerian-Eulerian framework, whereas the fuel particles are regarded as a discrete phase. To validate the numerical method, the results are compared with experimental data in the form of preferential positions, velocity vectors and the dispersion coefficient of the fuel particles. It is observed that the proposed numerical technique is able to capture the behavior of fuel particles in fluidized beds.