Mesoscience-based structural theory for heterogeneous gas-solid flows

Abstract: Quantification of the spatiotemporal dynamics of heterogeneous gas-solid flows is critical for the design, scale-up and optimization of gas-solid reactors. In this article, by using the core concept of mesoscience (the compromise in competition between dominant mechanisms), a mathematically rigorous procedure is proposed to develop a mesoscience-based structural theory for the dynamics of heterogeneous gas-solid flows via describing the physical states corresponding to the realization of dominant mechanisms as the interpenetrating continua, finding the microscale governing equations of gas-solid flow, defining a dominant mechanism indicator function, and finally, performing ensemble averaging to obtain the macroscopic governing equations. It is shown that the theory can be mathematically formulated as partial differential equations (PDE) constrained dynamic optimization, possible closures for the constitutive relationships are then discussed, and numerical validations using a simplified theory are also performed. Present study (i) offers an alternative method to the popular two-fluid model for simulating the spatiotemporal dynamics of heterogeneous gas-solid flows, with the distinct advantage that the constitutive relationships can be developed using the models and correlations that are obtained from homogeneous systems, of course an extra model for the interphase mass transfer rate between dilute phase and dense phase is needed, and the effective numerical solution of PDE-constrained dynamic optimization needs to be explored; and (ii) provides a feasible procedure to formulate concrete mathematical equations from the core concept of mesoscience.