Gas-solid fluidized beds (GSFB) have been investigated by many researchers due its high importance in the industry. Many efforts, both experimentally and theoretically, have been made to predict their behavior. Due to differences in the particle sizes, particle segregation is a common phenomenon in the gas-solid fluidized beds. Particle segregation affects the efficiency of heat transfer and mass transfer in the fluidized bed. In order to prevent the hot-spots and degradation of products in the fluidized bed reactors in which exothermic reaction occurs, proper mixing in the bed is required. To improve the efficiency of these processes at high pressures, in depth understanding of segregation and mixing phenomena are required. Therefore, it is the aim of this work to examine the effect pressure, particle size and gas inlet velocity on mixing and segregation parameters in these beds. To obtain these objectives, a commercial computational fluid dynamics package namely MFIX were utilized and Paraview was also employed to analyze the data. The findings of the present study reveal that computa- tional fluid dynamics is a powerful tool for assessing the parameters affecting the performance of fluidized beds.

Keywords