2009 International Conference on Environmental Science and Information Application Technology

Analysis of Flow Field in Vertical Roller Mill Chamber Based on Turbulent Models
Yewang SUN, Xiangbo ZE,Xuefeng
YANG,Chaoyang ZHANG

Yiqi ZHOU
School of Mechanical Engineering
Shandong University
Jinan, China

School of Mechanical Engineering

University of Jinan
Jinan, China
e-mail:sunyewang@gmail.com
AbstractMixture multiphase flow model and several common
turbulent models of the computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
are chose. According to the two-phase turbulent coupling
characteristic of powder, hot-air flow field and the operation
data of the vertical roller mill chamber, it analyzed threedimensional flow of the chamber using standard k  H

turbulent model, RNG k  H turbulent model and Reynolds

stress equation model (RSM). The results show that high
pressure flow region enhancing separation efficiency is formed
between the wall surface of chamber and the side of table. High
speed flow in the end of the high pressure region improves the
transportation efficiency of powder. The chamber internal flow
field has part turbulent anisotropy. Especially, turbulent pulse
between the table and gray bucket is significant.

of gas-solid flow are successfully applied in the cyclone

separator and coarse pulverized coal separator. But research
on gas-solid coupling flow field of roller mill is just start [34]. In recent years, adaptation to China's industrial
sustainable development, promoting the high efficiency and
technical innovation of roller mill has become a key
problem in the process of powder production. Particularly,
traditional profile modeling renovation appears bottleneck
in improving roller mill efficiency and the research on the
mill powder flow field is a serious question of powder
manufacture.

Keywords-vertical roller mill, multiphase flow, turbulent

model, chamber

I.

INTRODUCTION

As a grinding equipment vertical roller mill integrates

grinding, grading, drying and air transport of powder. It has
advantages of ball mill in low noise, low pollution,
convenient operation, and high efficiency. Especially, there
is an important structural feature in vertical roller mill that it
can properly adjust grinding conditions to different abrasive
materials [1]. Since traditional pressure equipment was
replaced with the hydraulic system, the overall performance
of mill is more superior. Nowadays, vertical roller mill
brings much more social and economic benefit. And it
becomes the main machine in the grinding production. This
paper studied the HRM mill of Hefei Institute and the
structure diagram is shown in Figure 1.
In the chamber of vertical roller mill, powders
transportation process is as follows: material enters the table
surface of mill from the material inlet. Under the centripetal
force of rotating table, big material is crushed into material
bed and crushed fine particles are squeezed out of the table.
Immediately, the particles are wrapped in the rising highspeed air flow and insufflated the separator to complete the
gas-solid separation [2].
In the working process of vertical roller mill, powder
transportation and separation directly affect operation
efficiency. Since 1990s, with the rapid development of
computer technology as well as the theory of powders
separation in the world, the studies on the powder separation
978-0-7695-3682-8/09 $25.00 2009 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/ESIAT.2009.162

1-hot gas input2-table3-roller4-material input5-separator , 6powder output

Figure 1. HRM 4800 structure diagram

II.

PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS OF CHAMBER FLOW FIELD

According to the chamber structural characteristics, the

chamber flow field of the vertical roller mill can be
attributed to pipe steady flow problem. Based on the critical
Reynolds number 2320 of pipe fluid flow, flow field can be
divided into laminar flow and turbulent flow. The greater
Reynolds number, the smaller viscous force relative to
inertial force is. Inertial force easily makes fluid micelle be
disorder. Research on the chamber internal flow field of the
vertical roller mill, it should firstly calculate preliminary
characteristics of the flow field on the basis of working
condition parameters. The main parameters of HRM4800
working conditions are shown in table 1.

637

w
 U m    U m vm  m
wt

According to the parameters and the structure size of

HRM4800, internal flow field of chamber was preliminarily
analyzed. It calculated that wind speed of the gas input is
about 62m /s and the gas input area is about 5m2. According
to equivalent area of tubular, the gas entrance diameter is
2.5m. Under the normal pressure, with temperature
increasing, gas viscosity kinetic viscosity coefficient
increases. When temperature is 500K, gas viscosity kinetic
viscosity coefficient is 2.510-5m2/s [5]. Reynolds number
of the gas transportation equation is as follows:
 Re

VD

62 u 2.5
2.5 u 10 5

6.2 u 10 

Table
rational
rate
( r/min)
25.5

III.

HRM4800 MAIN PARAMETERS

Input gas
quantity
(m3/s)

Input gas
temperature
(K)

chamber
pressure
(kPa)

280320

500570

58

Output
Gas
temperature
(K)
350360

GAS-SOLID TWO-PHASE FLOW MODELS OF

CHAMBER

The flow field of the vertical roller mill chamber is

mainly influenced by hot air and the rotation of table.
Powder squeezed out of the table and hot air have different
speed. The gas-solid flow coupling is strong, so mixture
multiphase flow model is used. Taking into account the
temperature effect, energy transfer was set up. Considering
the complexity of the turbulent flow, the two-equation
models and Reynolds stress equation model were chose.
A. Gas-solid Flow Numerical Models
Mixture multiphase flow model is usually used to
simulate different flow speed multiphase flow field. The
model is also used to simulate strong coupling isotropy and
the same speed multiphase flow. During the calculation, the
model is achieved by solving the mixed-phase continuity
equation, momentum equation, energy equation, the secondphase volume fraction equation and relative speed algebraic
equation [6-7].
Mixture model continuity equation

D k U k vk

Um

Uk

Mixture model momentum equation

> 

w
Umv m   Umvmvm  p  Pm vm  vmT 
wt
My
V
d >V @
nmax I

U m g  F  D k UZk vdrk vdrk 

k
1

v k  vm

vdrk

Where:
Re Reynolds number, V pipe cross-section average
fluid velocity, D pipe diameter (characteristic length),Q
kinetic viscosity coefficient.
The calculated Re is 6.2106 greater than the turbulent
critical value of pipe. So the chamber internal flow field
of the vertical roller mill is turbulent flow field.
According to the parameters of the vertical roller mill,
the turbulent intensity, turbulent kinetic energy, and
turbulent dissipation rate are 0.023, 3.0m2/s2 and 6 [5].
TABLE I.

k 1

Um



vm

Mixture model energy equation

n
w n
D k U k Ek  >D k vk U k Ek  p @

wt k 1
k 1
k eff T   S E

vk2
2

Ek

hk 

Uk

The second-phase volume fraction equation:

w
D p U p   D p U p vm  D p U p vdrp 
wt

Pm

mixture

vm mass average velocity, U m mixture density, D k 

the k -phase volume fraction, m  mass transportation
of mass resource, F volume force,

viscosity, vdrk the second-phase shift velocity, keff

availability heat exchange efficiency, S E the whole
volume heat resource, hk the k -phase apparent enthalpy.
B. Turbulent Models
Standard k  H two- equation viscosity model mainly
solves turbulent model with high Re . To acquire better
circumfluence analysis results, it should solve turbulent
kinetic energy equation, dissipation rate H balance equation
of the unit mass fluid, and calculate every turbulent
viscosity. Because it assumed the Reynolds stress isotropy
viscosity coefficient, the model easily leads to the distortion
of anisotropy turbulent line in the strong swirl flow [8]. In
1972, Launcher and Spalding firstly put forward definition
formula of standard k  H two-equation model [9]:

P wui'

U wxk

Pt

UC P

638

'
wu j

wxk

k2

turbulent dissipation rate

10

11

P turbulent

viscosity C experience constant u time average

speed.
Transportation equation

wUk  wUkui 

wt
wxi

w
wx j

Pt
P 
Vk

wk


wx j

Pt
P 
VH

wH


wx j

(12)

Gk  Gb  UH  YM  S k
w Uk  w Ukui 

wt
wxi
C1k

H
k

w
wx j

Gk  C3H Gb   C2H U H

(13)

 SH

Gk items of turbulent kinetic energy k because of

average speed gradient Gb items of turbulent kinetic

energy

because of buoyancy, YM On behalf of the

contribution of compressible turbulent pulse expansion, V k 

turbulent kinetic energy Prandtl number

VH

dissipation rate H Prandtl number S User-defined

source term.
RNG k  H model modified by the standard k  H
model takes into account the rotating flow of the average
flow. The produced items not only concern information of
flow, but also are function of spatial coordinate in the same
problem. RNG model can deal with high strain rate and
large streamline curvature of flow field better.
Unlike the two-equation models, RSM should directly
solve six independent Reynolds stress transport equations.
These equations can be got through the average time of the
Navier-Stokes equations or the calculation of independent
Reynolds stress components. Thus it is more suitable for
strong rotation flow field. RSM completely describes the
turbulence and considers the transportation trait of
anisotropic turbulence. RSM equations are illustrated clearly
in the reference [6].
IV.

Figure 2.

3-D chamber grid model

B. Simulation Analysis of the Chamber Flow

According to the table1, the gas mass flux 65 kgm-2s1of chamber was used to analyzed the flow field. The results
are as shown in Figure 34.
Figure 3 shows that chamber flow field is affected by the
table rotating; gas-solid flow has a strong rotating flow
characteristics. Hot air from the input into the chamber rises
along the wall of table. Gas-solid flow forms large eddy
between the ash bucket and table. With the flow line
bending adaptation increase of the turbulent models, large
eddy pulsation gradually becomes the path bending trace. In
particular, Figure 3c shows that the flow field trace has part
anisotropy. Because of two-equation models are based on
isotropic turbulent viscosity to calculate the turbulent stress,
they can not consider well the surface curvature changes of
rotating flow. So the track curvature of Reynolds stress
equation turbulent model changed significantly.

SIMULATION OF 3-D CHAMBER MODEL

A. 3-D Modeling and Meshing

After meshing, the boundaries of model were set up. The
edge of table was set up the input of gas; table was rotation
wall and the entrance of separator was the output of fluid.
Further, boundary parameters were set up in the calculation
procedures of Fluent.
According to the characteristics and fluid numerical
simulation of chamber, SolidWorks was used to set up the
three-dimensional chamber model. Then the model was
meshed by Gambit software with the finite volume method
(FVM). The grid model is shown in Figure 2.

(a )standard k  H model ( b) RNG k  H model

(c) RSM

Figure 3. Two-phase flow path lines on the x=0 surface based on different
turbulent models

639

V.

(a) standard k  H model

CONCLUSIONS

Internal gas-solid coupling flow field of HRM4800

chamber is analyzed numerically considering table rotation
in the use of different turbulent models .The results show
that:
RSM includes more physical theories than k  H model
the simulation, and has function of three-dimensional
complex turbulent flow simulation. Particularly, RSM is
superior to k  H model in calculation of sudden-expansion
flow separation zone and strong turbulent anisotropy
transport flow. But RSM has few defaults used for general
reflux flow and it should solve six differential Reynolds
stress equations in three-dimensional flow field, require
perfect computer and much more calculation time.
The internal flow field of vertical roller mill chamber
has 3-D flow rotation characteristics affected by the table
rotation. Low-speed high-pressure zone in the table edge of
the chamber makes for gas-solid coupling. The high speed
flow in the end of the high pressure region enhances the
powder transportation efficiency.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

(b) RNG k  H model

Supported by National Key Project of Scientific and

Technical Supporting Programs Funded by Ministry of
Science & Technology of China during the 11th Five-year
Plan (NO.2006BAF02A24) and the Key Subject Research
Foundation of Shandong Province (NO.XTD0713).
REFERENCES
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(c) RSM
Figure 4. Two-phase flow velocity vector on the x=0 surface based on
different turbulent models(m/s)

Figure 4 shows two-phase flow fluid velocity vector in

the chamber flow field. Particles were brought up by gas
fluid, because of the entrance hot gas. Two-phase coupling
flow field appeared obvious vortex in the impact of phases
velocity, energy and pressure difference. When the hot air
was in the region between the chamber wall and table, with
the sharp decrease of regional spatiality, high-speed gas was
hindered into high-pressure areas .And in the end of lowspeed high-pressure zone, there was much higher speed gas.
This region is in favor of solid-gas coupling and promotes
the powder transportation efficiency. Because of the
applicability of RSM for strong swirl, flow field is rotation
of the natural bending between bucket and table in Figure 4c.
But the k  H models are more evident for the general
circumfluence between the chamber wall and the ash bucket.

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