CFD Simulation of Gas-Solid-Liquid Bubble Column

The dependence of froth flotation performance on various inter-related chemical, operational and instrumental components, makes optimizing a flotation system a very complex task. Computational Fluid Dynamics tools provide the means to study the flow inside a flotation cell by employing mathematical models that describe the interaction between the different phases of the system. The purpose of this work is to use Euler-Euler-Euler CFD simulations in OpenFOAM to validate a set of interfacial models to determine the hydrodynamics of a gas-solid-liquid flow. The combination of previously well validated baseline models for gas-liquid flows and solid-liquid flows is used for this purpose. The baseline combination includes drag, lift, wall, turbulent dispersion and virtual mass forces as well as bubble induced turbulence for gas-liquid interaction, and drag, lift, turbulent dispersion and virtual mass forces for solid-liquid interaction. Based on an extensive literature review of gas-solid-liquid experiments, the bubble column data of Rampure et al. are chosen for the numerical validation. Preliminary results show that the bubble diameter, which was not measured precisely, plays a significant role for the gas volume fraction distribution. Bubble diameter of 7 mm yields gas volume fraction profiles in agreement with the experimental data. The baseline combination yields higher particle suspension than indicated by the experimental data. This leads to a systematic study of the closure models. Choosing a model set similar to that of Rampure et al. improves the agreement of the solid distribution but deteriorates that of the gas distribution. It must be noted that, the high gas flow rate and high solid concentration likely require consideration of further aspects that are expected to have a significant effect on the flow. These may include a PIT model, a swarm corrector for the bubble and particle drag force, modifying the bubble drag force due to the existence of particles and vice versa, a solid pressure due to particle collisions and modifying the liquid viscosity due to the presence of particles. The study of the effect of these aspects is still on-going.