Numerical Analysis of Electrostatic Force and Electric Potential Distribution in Charged Gas-Solid Fluidized Bed

Electrostatics occurs in the gas-solid fluidization processes, which influences the hydrodynamics of gas-solid flow. Numerical simulation has been applied to study the electrostatic phenomena in gas-solid flow in recent years, including Eulerian-Eulerian and Eulerian-Lagrangian approaches. However, few detailed research has investigated the influence mechanism of electrostatics on the hydrodynamics of gas-solid flow. In this work, a hybrid approach is applied to study the electrostatics in gas-solid fluidized bed which consists of two parts: (1) Computational Fluid Dynamics-Discrete Element Method (CFD-DEM). (2) The electrostatic field model. DEM is implemented to analyze the electrostatic force acting on the particles. The magnitude and direction of the electrostatic force is obtained by solving Coulomb’s law directly. The electrostatic field model is used to obtain the electric potential distribution. The model is described by the electric potential scalar equation which is derived by Maxwell’s equations and the Bruggeman’s equation.