Study of Dispersed Phase Model for the Simulation of a Bubble Column

The variations in the size and shape distributions of the dispersed phase play a major role in the simulation of bubble column flows. The population balance equation (PBE) can be used to describe the evolution of the dispersed phase. Nevertheless, this is computationally demanding. The present work extends previous work by applying a spectral element method of a least squares type to solve this equation when studying three-dimensional transient multi-phase flow. The analysis is focused on the use of a velocity distribution which depends on the bubble size.