Agglomeration Process of Wet Granular Material: Effects of Size Distribution and Froude Number
Résumé
Granulation or agglomeration process of solid particles was applied in a wide range of the
industrial fields including steel making [1], pharmaceutical industry [2] and and powder
metallurgy [3]. In the iron-making industry, agglomeration process is one of the most critical
stages in the sintering process. An agglomeration drum is a rotating, cylindrical dum which
utilizes a tumble and grow action to form spherical granules in the presence of a liquid binder.
More specifically, material and liquid binder are fed into the drum. As the drum rotates,
material fines get tacky in the presence of the binder, and pick up more fines as they contact
with other wet particles. There are various parameters which effect on the granule formation
and development including initial particle size distribution, raw material properties, filling
level of particles in the drum, the amount and viscosity of the binding liquid, ratio between
drum diameter and particle size, the particle size, and rotational speed of drum.
In this work, we simulate the agglomeration process of solid grains composed of spherical
particles in the presence of a viscous liquid by means of molecular dynamics (MD)
simulations [4]. We are mostly interested in application to iron ore granulation in a rotary
drum agglomerator. We are also interested in understanding the agglomeration process at the
particle scale like accretion, erosion, redistribution of binding liquid. And investigation the
effects of control parameters such as flow regime (rotational speed) which defined by Froude
number, and initial size distribution. The presence of liquid binder is modeled as a capillary
attraction force as well as liquid viscous force. The capillary cohesion force is simulated as an
attraction force at the contact between particles and expressed as an explicit function of the
gap, liquid volume, surface tension and the particle-liquid-gas contact angle [5]. During the
rotation, the dry particles flow around the spherical granule. This state continuously occurs
the accretion and erosion phenomenon between dry and wet particle. We find that the granule
growth increases exponentially with the number of rotations of drum. This growth rate is
proportional to the increase of size ratio. However, the changing of different values of Froude
number between rolling and cascading regime can not dominate the granule growth.
Domaines
Génie civilOrigine | Fichiers produits par l'(les) auteur(s) |
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