On the statistical steady state gas-solid flow in a riser as predicted through a two-fluid simulation

Abstract

This work is concerned with the extremely high computational costs of the two-fluid simulations of gas-solid flows in risers. In a previous article [1] a procedure was proposed to speed up the simulations towards the desired statistical steady state flow regime. In this continuing article the concern is turned to the time extent that a simulation must advance inside the statistical steady state regime so that suitable time averaged predictions can be made. An analysis is carried out using the results of a transient two-fluid simulation of a riser flow performed inside the statistical steady state regime. Time averaged results were produced considering different time averaging intervals of 5, 10, 15 and 20 seconds. Both the transient behavior of the predictions and the time averaged results are discussed. For the present case, it was found that 10 seconds of fluidization taken inside the statistical steady state regime are enough for a reasonable qualitative description of the average flow.