Modeling aggregation kinetics of fluidized bed spray agglomeration for porous particles

The present work develops a comprehensive one-dimensional pure agglomeration population balance model for simulating spray fluidized bed agglomeration of porous particles. The effect of micro-processes on aggregation kinetics is analyzed using a sophisticated constant number Monte-Carlo (CNMC) approach. The CNMC is used as a virtual spray fluidized bed granulator and takes into account several micro-processes such as wetting, convective drying, imbibition, agglomeration etc. so that it is a model for the real granulator. The main components influencing the agglomeration kinetics, namely the total number of particles, the number of wet particles, the collision frequency per particle and the average wet surface coverage fraction per wet particle are modeled and incorporated in the conventional one-dimensional population balance model. Finally, the proposed population balance model is validated against the results of CNMC. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.