Numerical Study of Gas Flow Pattern In a Spray Granulation Tower: The Tower Structure Effect

    An array nozzle distributor is introduced into a conventional cylinder-on-cone spray granulation tower to improve the separation efficiency for low-density particles. Gas flow behavior in the new spray granulation tower is investigated by using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) technique in the present paper. The gas turbulent flow is modelled using the Reynolds stress model. A limited validation of the simulation is achieved by the good agreement between the calculated flow pattern and the qualitative experimental result. On that basis, the effects on the fluid dynamics of nozzle locations, cone dimensions and diameters of gas outlet pipe are analyzed. The numerical results show that tangential and axial velocity profiles are greatly affected by radial locations of nozzles and cone dimensions, while the effects of axial locations of nozzles and diameters of gas outlet pipe are less significant.