Prediction of Particles-Air Movement in Silo during Filling Operation

Abstract

Awareness of dust explosion hazards during silo filling operation is important for safety measures. Thus, information on particles-air flow field is required to assess the likelihood of the hazard. Flow field visualization via experimental investigation associated with difficulties and risks. Hence, in the present study, a modeling formulation using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, FLUENT software was employed to predict an insight of flow field distribution, in terms of mean and root mean square (RMS) velocities vectors in cylindrical silo during axial filling. According to the simulation results, predicted flow field has a great influence to the silo height and distance to the silo wall due to gravitational force and movement of fugitive dust and re-circulation of air. The results showed that the predicted data were in very good agreement with experimental data obtained from the literature. The maximum error was around 10%. The study has gone some way towards enhancing our understanding of the particles-air behavior inside industrial equipments during filling operation.