Hydrodynamics Behavior Of Metallurgical Silicon Particles In Spout-fluid Bed With A Draft Tube

In order to find a new hydrogenation reactor, hydrodynamic experiment was carried out in cylindrical spout-fluid bed (182mm inner diameter) with a draft tube(SFBDT). The metallurgical silicon particles were used as the raw materials. By changing the spouting gas velocity and fluidizing gas velocity, pressure drop and standard deviation of pressure drop in the spout zone were measured. Combining with the visual observation, SFBDT was divided into several different flow patterns. The results show that the spout zone has the properties of the spouted bed, and the annular region is similar with the fluidized bed.The effects of entrainment height, diameter of draft tube, bed height and fluidizing gas velocity on minimum spouting velocity and gas bypassing fraction of spouting gas were investigated. The results show that the minimum spouting velocity and gas bypassing fraction of spouting gas decrease with bed height, fluidizing gas velocity and diameter of draft tube, but increase with entrainment height.An experimental correlation was proposed for predicting the minimum spouting velocity.The effects of entrainment height, diameter of draft tube, bed height, fluidizing gas velocity and spouting gas velocity on solids circulation rates were also investigated. The parameters as mentioned above which caused the changes of solids circulation rates were analyzed with the vertical injection and lateral entrainment theory.Commercial software Fluent6.3was applied to simulate the experiment. Flow behavior of metallurgical silicon particles was studied using the Eulerian–Eulerian model and kinetic theory of granular flow. The overall trend of simulated results and experiment results was consistent. Simulation can be an effective way to predict the experimental results.