Fluidized Bed Bio-Reactor ANSYS Fluent Training

Description

Description

This project investigates the fluidized bed bio-reactor. A fluidized bed bioreactor (FBR) is a type of device that can perform a variety of multiphase chemical reactions. In these types of reactors, a fluid (gas or liquid) is passed through a solid granular material (usually a catalyst) at a rate sufficient to suspend the solid and cause it to behave like a fluid.

This process, known as fluidization, gives FBR many important advantages. As a result, FBRs are used for many industrial applications such as biomedical and food industry.

The geometry of the present project is designed in Design modeler and meshed in ANSYS Meshing software. The mesh type is structured and the element number is equal to 26,289.

Fluidized Bed Bio-Reactor Methodology

The Eulerian multiphase model was used in this project to simulate the fluidized bed bioreactor. Granular sub-model was activated and phase property model was used to obtain the granular temperature. Drag and virtual mass forces were also enabled between the phase pair of air and silicon (sand), while setting the value of restitution coefficient between the silicon particles equal to 0.9.

Also, Ranz-Marshall model is used to calculate the heat transfer between the air and silicon particles which can calculate the new temperature of each phase after their interactions.

Furthermore, energy equation is enabled to calculate the temperature change inside the domain. In addition, standard k-epsilon model is used to solve for the turbulent fluid equations. The present study is performed in transient format and 2D planar model is used to simulate the problem inside a two-dimensional domain.

Gravity is also enabled to observe the motion of particle. As the air blows under them lifting the silicon particles inside the bio-reactor.

Conclusion

Finally, as shown in the obtained results, due to the air blowing under the silicon particles, they tend to move upward because of the fact that the exerted force on the silicon particles balances their weight. Also, similar to what occurs inside a real bio-reactor, the temperature of the fluid changes. This temperature change helps the reactions to occur faster (considering the fact that catalysts work better in higher temperatures).