Extending the EMMS/bubbling model to fluidization of binary particle mixture: Formulation and steady-state validation

The EMMS/bubbling model originally proposed for fluidization of monodisperse particles is extended to fluidization of binary particle mixture in this study. The dense and dilute phases are considered to comprise of two types of particles differing in size and/or density. Governing equations and the stability condition are then formulated and solved by using an optimization numerical scheme. The effects of bubble diameter are first investigated and a suitable bubble diameter correlation is chosen. Preliminary validation for steady state behavior shows the extended model can fairly capture the overall hydrodynamic behaviors in terms of volume fraction of bubbles and average bed voidage for both monodisperse and binary particle systems. This encourages us to integrate this model with CFD for more validations in the future.