A novel approach for modeling material bed in a rotary kiln

Handling and processing contaminated, as well as environmentally hazardous materials, requires a deeper understanding of their physics of deformation and flow. In industrial scale, a sampling procedure can be applied at the end of the large reactor aperture such as a rotary kiln. In order to predict the processes involved in systems such as a rotary kiln, in the present study computational models are used to develop a useful tool to guide the refinement of the design process. Employing hydrodynamic continuum equations for describing the deformation and flow of dense gas-particle mixtures, the behavior of the materials within the bed and the release process of the contaminants are modeled during the handling process. The present model assumes a thin active layer at the bed surface with the rest of the bed material deforming plastically like a solid under weak shear. Material transport properties are defined in order to describe the mixing processes in the above-mentioned system. The numerical results obtained elucidate the physics of movement of the bed material, opening the possibility for developing a meaningful numerical model for the heat and mass transfer in a rotary kiln that may be of industrial use.