Effect of elevated pressure on gas-solid flow properties in a powder feeding system

Abstract In view of the powder feeding system, a multi-physical coupling model of the gas-powder-piston was established based on the Euler-Euler two-fluid model. The numerical simulation method was applied to explore the effects of dense gas-solid flow characteristics under different operating pressures. The results show that gas-solid pulsations at different operating pressures are mainly concentrated in the upper part of the powder tank. An elevated operating pressure efficiently decreases the powder layer area (εp = 0.1) fluctuation. As the operating pressure increases from 0.5 MPa to 3.0 MPa, the rising time and fluctuation rate of pressure are reduced by 71.4% and 62.3%, respectively, and the pressure in the tank has a long stabilization period. Meanwhile, the variation of the instantaneous powder flow rate is more stable and its average value is closer to the theoretical. A high-pressure environment is more conducive to the stable transportation of powder.