CFD study of solids concentration in a fluidised-bed coater with variation of atomisation air pressure

The solids volume fraction inside a tapered fluidised bed coater was simulated with the use of an Eulerian computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model with atomisation nozzle sub-model. The drag force, describing momentum transfer between the gas and solid phases was calculated using the drag model proposed by [1]. In order to account for the particle size distribution of the fluidised solid materials, a 4-phase Eulerian model was used. The model-predicted results for different atomisation air pressures were verified using published experimental data [2]. It was shown that the model proved to be highly sensitive to changes in the fluidisation air flow rate with regard to the model-predicted solids volume distribution.