CFD-DEM analysis of particle polydispersity on the performance of fluidised bed reactor during silane pyrolysis

A CFD-DEM model is developed for chemical vapour deposition of silane in a fluidized bed reactor to investigate the effect of polydispersity on local phase dynamics, mass and heat transport, as well as the rate of Si deposition. Both gas -phase fines formation and heterogeneous deposition on the seed particle, as well as the scavenging effect for Si particle growth, are incorporated. The method is first validated against the experimentally measured Si deposition rate, percentage of fine production and minimum fluidisation velocity. Subsequently, the properties, primarily particle intermixing, fluidisation behaviour and bubble dynamics along with the deposition process, are analyzed for several polydisperse beds under various operating conditions. The effect of polydispersity of the bed on a fraction of the bubble size, dense phase expansion and interchange coefficient between various phases is thoroughly investigated to establish a correlation with reactor performance. The results show that broad -Gaussian particle size distribution (PSD) exhibits excellent improvement in fluidisation behaviour, resulting in a high deposition rate, and minimum formation of Si fines. (c) 2024 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.