Effects of the number of particles and coordination number on viscous-flow agglomerate sintering--颗粒学报PARTICUOLOGY

Kamyabi, M., Saleh, K., Sotudeh-Gharebagh, R., & Zarghami, R. (2019). Effects of the number of particles and coordination number on viscous-flow agglomerate sintering. Particuology, 43, 76-83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.partic.2018.01.015

Effects of the number of particles and coordination number on viscous-flow agglomerate sintering

Mohammadmahdi Kamyabi ^{a b}, Khashayar Saleh ^b *, Rahmat Sotudeh-Gharebagh ^a *, Reza Zarghami ^a

a Multiphase Systems Research Laboratory, School of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tehran, Tehran 11155/4563, Iran
b Sorbonne University/Compiègne University of Technology, EA 4297 Transformations Intégrées de la Matière renouvelable, France

10.1016/j.partic.2018.01.015

Volume 43, April 2019, Pages 76-83

Received 26 August 2017, Revised 26 December 2017, Accepted 28 January 2018, Available online 2 July 2018, Version of Record 19 February 2019.

E-mail: khashayar.saleh@utc.fr; sotudeh@ut.ac.ir

Highlights

• Viscous sintering of multi-particle systems was simulated using CFD.

• The method was validated via comparison with published data for two-particle systems.

• Effects of number of particles and coordination number on the sintering rate were investigated.

Abstract

The process of sintering of several particles in contact via a viscous flow mechanism was studied numerically using computational fluid dynamics. The volume of fluid technique within a finite volume method was used to simulate bridge formation between particles, as well as densification at different configurational states of the particles. The method was validated by comparing results for two-particle coalescence with the literature. The effect of the number of particles on agglomeration kinetics was studied by comparing bridge growth rate for systems having different numbers of particles in a chain. Although increasing the number of particles led to a decrease in the local bridge growth rate and to slower equilibration, there were no marked differences, when the overall volume of the system was considered. The effect of coordination number on the densification rate was directly studied by changing the number of particles in contact with a central particle. Increasing the coordination number caused the overall rate of densification to increase, but delayed equilibration, analogous to steric effects. These findings describe the configurational state of agglomerates, typical of mesoscale caking. In a multi-scale study, they can be used to characterize caking at a bulk scale to partly address the lack of experimental data in this field.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Caking; Agglomeration; Sintering; Viscous flow mechanism; Volume of fluid; Coordination number

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