Numerical Simulation of a Three-Phase Fluidized Bed Reactor: Hydrodynamic Analysis of the Expansion Zone

The present work focuses on the hydrodynamic analysis of a three-phase fluidized bed reactor and the influence of several key aspects, such as volume fractions, dynamic pressure, magnitude of gas velocities, liquid and solid phases (hydrogen, extra heavy oil and gamma alumina), and phase interactions, through drag models with the k-epsilon turbulence approach.

The simulation uses an Euler-Euler method, coupled with different correlations with materials characterized by physical and thermal properties, the transport processes that are developed within the transient regime.

The proposed model with a three-phase fluidized bed reactor was solved numerically (by ANSYS-Fluent software) with different mesh refinements on bed expansion zone, to observe the influence of the hydrodynamic parameters and convergence criteria.

With our model, and supported by numerical simulations, the involved hydrodynamics parameters could be predicted from defined boundaries conditions.