Kinetic theory based computation of PSRI riser: Part II—Computation of mass transfer coefficient with chemical reaction

The design of circulating fluidized bed systems requires the knowledge of mass transfer coefficients or Sherwood numbers. A literature review shows that these parameters in fluidized beds differ up to seven orders of magnitude.To understand the phenomena, a kinetic theory based computation was used to simulate the PSRI challenge problem I data for flow of FCC particles in a riser, with an addition of an ozone decomposition reaction. The mass transfer coefficients and the Sherwood numbers were computed using the concept of additive resistances. The Sherwood number is of the order of 4 × 10−3 and the mass transfer coefficient is of the order of 2 × 10−3 m/s, in agreement with the measured data for fluidization of small particles and the estimated values from the particle cluster diameter in part one of this paper. The Sherwood number is high near the inlet section, then decreases to a constant value with the height of the riser. The Sherwood number also varies slightly with the reaction rate constant. The conventionally computed Sherwood number measures the radial distribution of concentration caused by the fluidized bed hydrodynamics, not the diffusional resistance between the bulk and the particle surface concentration. Hence, the extremely low literature Sherwood numbers for fluidization of fine particles do not necessarily imply very poor mass transfer.