Investigation of Rope Formation in Gas-Solid Flows using Flow Visualization and CFD Simulations

Coal is still one of the widely-used resources for power generation all over the world. Most of the relevant industries use pulverized coal as fuel which is delivered to the furnace by pneumatic conveying. Extensive use of coal has resulted in severe environmental problems due to emissions such as Carbon dioxide, Nitrogen and Sulphur compounds among others. It is postulated that if combustion efficiency is improved, this will lead to significant reduction in pollutant emissions. Combustion efficiency of pulverized coal power plants is influenced strongly by particle size distribution. Most industries use Cyclone Separators (or Classifiers) to separate the larger particles from the smaller ones as part of pre-combustion processes. The sizing and scaling of these classifiers are mostly based on empirical formulations. Detailed 3D numerical studies of these classifiers have not been successful in prediction of experimental observations, hence as such cannot be used as reliable tools for scale up studies. The main reason for this anomaly is believed to be failure of the models in capturing the dynamics of particle behavior in bends and ducts where particles form rope like structures with dense particle clusters. It is then imperative that more study is needed into the understanding of rope or cluster formation in gas-solid flows.;The main objective of the current study is to investigate the underlying mechanisms of rope formation phenomena. Gas-solid flow experiments have been performed in a vertical- horizontal 90o glass bend with high speed imaging of the rope formation. Also, several Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations have been performed using the commercial CFD package Ansys FLUENT to capture the roping phenomenon, and results have well supported the experimental observations. Several factors affecting rope formation have also been studied. Roping is basically a type of particle clustering in the sense high particle concentration regions are formed in both these phenomenon. Simulations have been performed on Fluid bed risers to capture clustering phenomenon and also to study the role of vorticity in cluster and rope formation with an objective of developing a fundamental definition for roping. MFIX, a multiphase flow code developed by NETL has also been used to capture the roping phenomenon. These results showed that high particle concentration was found to be in low vorticity regions surrounded by clockwise and counter-clockwise vortices. It was observed that there is indeed a vortex roller effect behind the formation of ropes. These results can be used to provide direction in development of computational models to better handle the gas-solid flow dynamics in classifiers

Computational modelling and analysis of the flow and performance in hydrocyclones

Hydrocyclones have been widely used to separate particles by size in many industries. Their flows are complicated and involve multiple phases: liquid, gas, and particles of different sizes and densities. A two fluid model, facilitated with the mixture model, has been used to study the flow in hydrocyclones under wide range of conditions and used here to study the effects of geometrical configuration and material properties of cyclones operated at different feed solids concentrations. The variables considered include geometrical configurations such as dimensions and shape of body, cone and vortex finder as well as particle density. The outcome shows a smaller cyclone results in an increased cut size, decreased pressure drop, sharper separation and higher water split. Both large and small spigot diameters lead to poor separation performances. Accordingly, an optimum spigot diameter can be identified depending on feed solids concentration. It is also shown that for all considered hydrocyclones, a better separation performance can be achieved by the operation at lower feed solid concentration. Further research shows that cyclone performance is sensitive to both length and shape of conical section. A longer conical section leads to decreased inlet pressure drop, d50, and Ep, and an increased water split. When cone shape varies from concave to convex, a compromise optimum performance for the cyclone with a convex cone is observed with a minimum Ep and relatively small pressure drop and water split. A new hydrocyclone featured with a long convex cone is then proposed which can improve the performance of the conventional cyclone. The keycharacteristics of flow in a hydrocyclone are then investigated when vortex finder geometry including diameter length and shape varies. It has been shown that a compromise optimum performance can be identified with relatively small inlet pressure drop, Ep, and water split. Discussion is then extended to flow behaviour analysis under the effect of different density fractions. The origin of flow pattern and the motion of coal particles have been predicted and discussed. The effect of coal density variation on operational conditions and performance of the large diameter hydrocyclones are also studied in this work