Hydrodynamic model validation of gas-solid-liquid flow in a slurry bubble column

The understanding of gas-solid-liquid three-phase flow is very importnant for the development of Reflux Flotation Cell. CFD simulations of such flows are feasible even on industrial scales within the Eulerian framework of interpenetrating continua. The performance of the framework, however, relies on the suitability of the closure models to account for phenomena on the scale of individual particles or bubbles, which are not resolved in this approach. To this end, the present work attempts to combine closure relations that were previously established for two-phase gas-liquid and solid-liquid flows. Due to the complexity of the RFC system, CFD-grade data to evaluate the overall closure model for three-phase gas-solid-liquid flows are not available yet. Therefore, comparison is made with a dataset from Rampure et al. [Can. J. Chem. Eng. 81 (2003), 692-706] for a slurry bubble column. Agreement of the combined model with the data is not entirely satisfactory yet. Possible reasons concerning both modeling and experiment are discussed and directions for further research identified.