CFD simulation of dense particulate reaction system: Approaches, recent advances and applications

Dense particulate reaction system (DPRS) is quite common in many engineering fields such as energy conversion, petro-chemical processing, mineral processing, chemical engineering and pharmaceutical manufacturing. These kinds of processes are extremely complex involving both physical changes and chemical changes. Understanding the fundamentals governing the gas-particle flow and coupled heat and mass transfer is of paramount importance to the design, control and optimization of DPRS of various types. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been recognized as a useful tool to achieve this goal. This paper provides a review of the CFD work in the simulation. The CFD approaches are categorized into Eulerian-Eulerian and Eulerian-Lagrangian ones. Detailed description and coupling scheme of gas-particle flow and chemical reaction of the two approaches are presented separately. An updated survey of published CFD studies is summarized. The developed models are shown to primarily involve Eulerian multi-fluid model, CFD-DEM (discrete element method) model and/or MP-PIC (multiphase particle-in-cell) model. Their respective advantages and limitations in application are analyzed. Finally, challenges and needs for future research are discussed.