Sug-grid closures for gas-solid flows modeling

• Grant number: 13/03745-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: July 01, 2013
• End date: June 30, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Chemical Engineering - Chemical Process Industries
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Seleghim Júnior
• Grantee: Christian Lea Coelho da Costa Milioli
• Host Institution: Escola de Engenharia de São Carlos (EESC). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 14/11359-2 - Two-fluid modeling of gas-solid flows: a sub-grid analysis applying forcing function method and application of dynamical adjustment to large scale simulations, BE.EP.PD

Abstract

Gas-solid flow reactors are omnipresent in chemical and energy industries, and their traditional project and optimization require investments of hundreds of millions of dollars in demonstration plants. The minimization or even elimination of such expending by partial or total substitution of those plants by computational experiment constitutes one of the greatest engineering goals of the present. Great research laboratories of the Department of Energy of the USA government, great industries and grate North-American universities are united for that goal. In perspective is the crucial necessity for developing realistic mathematical models. This, in fact, constitutes the fundamental objective of this Young Researcher proposition. It is ultimately intended to contribute for the habilitation of CFDs as effective tools for supporting project and optimization of reactors. The project is in collaboration with a strong research group of Princeton University, the 4th best university in the world in technological areas according to the Times Higher Education classification. More specifically, it is in collaboration with the Multiphase Flow Research Group led by Professor Sankaran Sundaresan, one of the greatest world's specialists in the specific area of the project. The project represents the continuity of a research effort in collaboration with Princeton University and great research laboratories from USA. Initial contacts with researchers from NETL and ORNL (Brazil, 2008, 2009, 2010) led to a training stage (NETL, 2011) followed by a research stage at Princeton University (2011-2012, under FAPESP support, process 2011/11278-4). It is observed that the researcher had already been working in the concerning research line throughout her doctoring as well as successive post-doctoring projects. It is evaluated that the research developed in Princeton represented strong impulse in the researcher`s qualification, besides being a significant contribution to the concerning state of the art. The developments of Princeton have now a continuation through this Young Researcher proposal. Besides the formal collaboration of Professor Sankaran Sundaresan and Dr. Sreekanth Pannala (ORNL), it is also expected occasional interactions and collaborations with other top researchers from USA: Sofiane Benyahia and Thomas O'Brien (NETL), Avik Sarkar (PNNL), Shailesh Ozarkar (Ansys Inc.) and William Holloway (Exxon Mobil). The researcher also intends to stimulate and collaborate with other emerging Brazilian groups developing research in clean energy, notably the Group of Research in Studies of Mineral Coal from SATC-SC. EESC-USP, through its Nucleous of Thermal and Fluids Engineering (NETeF), provides the basic infra-structure for the development of the current project (physical facilities, and high performance computers). In addition, the research infra-structure of Professor Sundaresan will be available in Princeton (physical facilities for in loco research, and a cluster of high performance computers for computational simulations). It is finally observed that this proposal represents the creation of a new line of research at NETeF, concerned with the development of mathematical models as tools for computational experiment, and is in line with the objectives of the most recent actions of EESC-USP in the Energy field, emphasizing the current implantation of new courses of Energy Engineering, and the recent implementation of the Thematic Pole in Renewable Energy and Environment (Polo Terra). Those initiatives are very much tuned with the objectives of the Special Program in Bioenergy (BIOEN) maintained by FAPESP, in which context NETeF of EESC-USP is considerably involved. (Glossary: NETL - National Energy Technology Laboratory, ORNL - Oak Ridge National Laboratory, PNNL - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, all from USA Department of Energy).