Numerical simulation of flow hydrodynamics of struvite pellets in a liquid-solid fluidized bed

Phosphorus recovery in the form of struvite has been aroused in recent decades for its dual advantages in eutrophication control and resource protection. The usage of the struvite products is normally determined by the size which is largely depended on the hydrodynamics. In this study, flow behavior of struvite pellets was simulated by means of Eulerian-Eulerian two-fluid model combining with kinetic theory of granular flow in a liquid-solid fluidized bed reactor (FBR). A parametric study including the mesh size, time step, discretization strategy, turbulent model and drag model was first developed, followed by the evaluations of crucial operational conditions, particle characteristics and reactor shapes. The results showed that a cold model with the mesh resolution of 16×240, default time step of 0.001sec and first order discretization scheme was accurate enough to describe the fluidization. The struvite holdup profile using Syamlal-O'Brien drag model was best fitted to the experimental data as compared with other drag models and the empirical Richardson-Zaki equation. Regarding the model evaluation, it showed that liquid velocity and particle size played important roles on both solid holdups and velocities. The reactor diameter only influenced the solid velocity while the static bed height almost took no effect. These results are direct and can be applied to guide the operation and process control of the struvite fluidization. Moreover, the model parameters can also be used as the basic settings in further crystallization simulations.