Evaluating of scale-up methodologies of gas-solid spouted beds for coating TRISO nuclear fuel particles using advanced measurement techniques

The work focuses on implementing for the first time advanced non-invasive measurement techniques to evaluate the scale-up methodology of gas-solid spouted beds for hydrodynamics similarity that has been reported in the literature based on matching dimensionless groups and the new mechanistic scale up methodology that has been developed in our laboratory based on matching the radial profile of gas holdup since the gas dynamics dictate the hydrodynamics of the gas-solid spouted beds. These techniques are gamma-ray computed tomography (CT) to measure the cross-sectional distribution of the phases' holdups and their radial profiles along the bed height and radioactive particle tracking (RPT) to measure in three-dimension (3D) solids velocity and their turbulent parameters. The measured local parameters and the analysis of the results obtained in this work validate our new methodology of scale up of gas-solid spouted beds by comparing for the similarity the phases' holdups and the dimensionless solids velocities and their turbulent parameters that are non-dimensionalized using the minimum spouting superficial gas velocity. However, the scale-up methodology of gas-solid spouted beds that is based on matching dimensionless groups has not been validated for hydrodynamics similarity with respect to the local parameters such as phases' holdups and dimensionless solids velocities and their turbulent parameters. Unfortunately, this method was validated in the literature by only measuring the global parameters. Thus, this work confirms that validation of the scale-up methods of gas-solid spouted beds for hydrodynamics similarity should reside on measuring and analyzing the local hydrodynamics parameters.