The Faculty of Engineering and Science – Department of Energy Technology – AAU

The transport, agglomeration and subsequently deposition of small adhesive particles play important roles in many industrial and fundamental processes. These processes range from particles accumulating at heat transfer surfaces, particles blocking pores in membrane filtration systems, particles being inhaled and deposited in our lungs to interstellar medium agglomerating causing early stages of new planets to form in space.
The purpose of this study is look into how particle response time and particle adhesiveness affect the agglomeration rate. To obtain a fully-developed flow, the computational domain is made periodic in the stream-wise direction. To avoid imposing any limitations on the agglomeration process, the soft-sphere DEM approach is used to resolve how particles collide, agglomerate, deposit and are re-entrained into the fluid due to collisions with other particles or by fluid forces.

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