Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

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Minerals Engineering
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mineng

Particle scale modelling of the multiphase ow in a dense medium cyclone:

Effect of uctuation of solids owrate
K.W. Chu a, S.B. Kuang a, A.B. Yu a,, A. Vince b
a
b

Laboratory for Simulation and Modelling of Particulate Systems, School of Materials Science and Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia
Elsa Consulting Group Pty. Ltd., PO Box 8100, Mt. Pleasant, QLD 4740, Australia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Available online 9 January 2012
Keywords:
Dense medium cyclone
Multiphase ow
Computational uid dynamics
Discrete element method
Dynamics
Fluctuation

a b s t r a c t
Dense medium cyclone (DMC) is widely used to upgrade run-of-mine coal in the coal industry. The ow
dynamics/uctuation in a DMC is important but has not been studied previously. In this work, the
dynamics is studied by numerically with special reference to the effect of the uctuation of solid mass
owrate. The simulation is carried out by use of a combined approach of Computational Fluid Dynamics
(CFD) and Discrete Element Method (DEM). In the model, the motion of discrete mineral particle phase is
obtained by DEM which applies Newtons equations of motion to every individual particle and the ow of
medium (mixture of water, air and ne magnetites) phase by the traditional CFD which solves the
NavierStokes equations at a computational cell scale. The simulated results are analysed in terms of
medium and coal ow patterns, and particleuid, particleparticle and particlewall interaction forces.
It is shown that under high uctuation frequency and current conditions, the performance of DMC is not
sensitive to both the uctuation amplitude and period of coal ow at the DMC inlet. However, under low
uctuation frequency, as uctuation amplitude increases, the separation performance deteriorates
slightly and the ow is obviously affected at the spigot. A notable nding is that the near-gravity particles
that tend to reside at the spigot and/or have longer residence time in the DMC would be affected more
than other particles. The work shows that this two-way coupled CFDDEM model could be a useful tool
to study the dynamics of the ow in DMCs.
2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Dense medium cyclone (DMC) is a high-tonnage device that has
been widely used to upgrade run-of-mine coal in the modern coal
industry by separating gangue from product coal. It is also used in a
variety of mineral plants treating iron ore, dolomite, diamonds,
potash and leadzinc ores. In this work, DMC refers to that used
in the coal industry. It involves multiple phases: air, water, coal
and magnetic/nonmagnetic particles of different sizes, densities
and other properties. Normally, the slurry including water, magnetite, and nonmagnetic particles is named medium in practice. In
the past, many studies have been conducted to understand the
ow and performance of DMCs. For convenience, the overall background for the present research is discussed in connection with our
previous studies (e.g., Chu et al., 2009a,b).
The general working principle of DMC has been well documented in literature (King and Juckes, 1984; Svarovsky, 1984;
Wills, 1992; Chu et al., 2009a). As schematically shown in Fig. 1a,
the feed, which is a mixture of raw coal and magnetite particles
carried by water, enters tangentially near the top of the cylindrical
Corresponding author. Tel.: +61 2 93854429; fax: +61 2 93855956.
E-mail address: a.yu@unsw.edu.au (A.B. Yu).
0892-6875/$ - see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.mineng.2011.12.011

section, thus forming a strong swirling ow. Centrifugal forces

cause the refuse or high ash particles to move towards the wall,
where the axial velocity points predominantly downward, and to
discharge through the spigot. The lighter clean coal particles, driven by pressure gradient force and radial uid drag force, move towards the longitudinal axis of the DMC, where there is usually an
air core, and the predominant axial velocity points upward and the
coal exits through the vortex nder.
Despite being widely used, problems are frequently encountered in the operation of DMCs. Typical problems are the so-called
surging phenomenon which may occur frequently and can lead
to a large portion of coal product reporting to reject (Wood,
1990), vortex nder overloading (Hu et al., 2001), severe wearing
of DMC walls (Zughbi et al., 1991), difculties in scale-up and system instability.
The experimental work on DMC has been notoriously cumbersome and expensive, and seldom conducted. The majority of the
previous studies were devoted to the quantication of key macroscopic parameters (e.g., pressure drop and overall separation efciency) under different conditions (Scott, 1990; Wood, 1990;
Restarick and Krnic, 1991; He and Laskowski, 1994; Ferrara et al.,
2000; Hu et al., 2001; Sripriya et al., 2007; Magwai and Bosman,
2008). On the other hand, the measurement at a microscopic scale

K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

35

Nomenclature
c
d
E
fc
fd
fpf
Fpf
g
G
I
kcell
ki
km
m
n
n
Np
P
DP
R
R
Re
t
T0
Ts
T
u
u
V
v
Vs

damping coefcient, dimensionless

particle diameter, m
Youngs modulus, Pa
contact force, N
damping force, N
particleuid interaction force, N
interaction forces between uid and solids phases in a
computational cell, N
gravity acceleration vector, 9.81 m/s2
gravity vector, N
moment of inertia of a particle, kg m
number of particles in a computational cell, dimensionless
number of particles in contact with particle i, dimensionless
number of collisions in a sampling time interval, dimensionless
mass, kg
sample times, dimensionless
unit vector in the normal direction of two contact
spheres, dimensionless
the total number of particles residing in the DMC
pressure, Pa
pressure drop, Pa
radius vector (from particle centre to a contact point), m
magnitude of R, m
Reynolds number, dimensionless
time, s
sampling starting time, s
total sampling time, s
driving friction torque, N m
mean uid velocity vector, m/s
uctuating uid velocity vector, m/s
volume, m3
particle velocity vector, m/s
sample volume, m3

has only been made to the medium ow (coal is not included) using
X-ray and gamma ray tomography (Galvin and Smitham, 1994;
Subramanian, 2002a). It is very difcult to measure the internal
ow and force structures in DMCs. Without such microscopic information, DMC is largely operated as a black-box operation.
Mathematical descriptions of DMCs are sparse in the literature.
The conventional Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) approach is
mainly used in initial studies in connection with Lagrangian particle tracking (LPT) model (Suasnabar and Fletcher, 2003; Narasimha
et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2009a,b). The CFDLPT approach tracks
the trajectories of individual particles on a given uid ow eld
and is able to qualitatively study the effect of some important
parameters of DMCs. However, it cannot satisfactorily describe
the effects of solids on medium ow and particleparticle interaction. This can be overcome by the combined approach of CFD and
Discrete Element Method (DEM) (Tsuji et al., 1992; Xu and Yu,
1997). In the CFDDEM model, the motion of particles is modelled
as a discrete phase, by applying Newtons laws of motion to individual particles, while the ow of uid is treated as a continuous
phase, described by the local averaged NavierStokes equations
on a computational cell scale. The approach has been recognised
as an effective method to study the fundamentals of particleuid
ow by various investigators (e.g., Tsuji et al., 1992; Xu and Yu,
1997; Li et al., 1999; Rhodes et al., 2001; Kafui et al., 2002; Li
and Kwauk, 2003; Yu and Xu, 2003; Feng et al., 2004; Di Renzo

Vcell

volume of a computational cell, m3

Greek letters
b
empirical coefcient dened in Table 2, dimensionless
d
vector of the particleparticle or particlewall overlap,
m
d
magnitude of d, m
e
porosity, dimensionless
/
parameter
l
uid viscosity, Pa s
lr
coefcient of rolling friction, m
ls
coefcient of sliding friction, dimensionless
m
Poissons ratio, dimensionless
q
density, kg/m3
s
viscous stress tensor, N/m3
x
angular velocity, rad/s
x
magnitude of angular velocity, rad/s
^
x
unit angular velocity
Subscripts
c
contact
cell
computational CFD cell
d
damping
D
drag
f
uid phase
ij
between particle i and j
i(j)
corresponding to i(j)th particle
max
maximum
n
in normal direction
p
particle phase
pg
pressure gradient
pf
between particle and uid
s
sample
t
in tangential direction

and Di Maio, 2007; Zhang et al., 2008; Zhao et al., 2009; Zhou
et al., 2010). Recently, a CFDDEM model was successfully used
to study the multiphase ow in DMCs (Chu et al., 2009a,b, 2010).
Both experimental and numerical studies of the ow in a DMC
are so challenging that until now there is still quite limited understanding of the ow in DMCs under different conditions. Notably,
the effect of system instability in a DMC is known to be important
in practice but was not studied previously in the literature. In practice, system instability can be caused by the following three main
aspects:
 Variation of coal type/properties: Run-of-mine coal from different mine locations can have different properties such as density/size distributions which can lead to uctuations of the
ow in DMCs. For example, it was found that the DMC operational pressure varies with coal particle density distribution
while the medium-to-coal (M:C) ratio is kept constant (Chu
et al., 2009b). In practice, the DMC operational pressure is normally set to a certain constant value. Therefore, when the coal
particle density distribution changes, the owrate of both medium and coal will change accordingly.
 Segregation of both coal and magnetite particles in the mixing
tanks and DMC feed pipes: In practice, coal is mixed with medium phase in mixing tanks and then pumped through a long
vertical pipe toward the DMC inlet. (In some operations there

36

K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

Fig. 1. Schematic (a), geometry (b) and mesh (c) representation of the simulated large DMC (Dc = 1000 mm).

is another mixing tank between the vertical pipe and the DMC
inlet.). As we know, there could be segregation of particles by
size and concentration in mixing tanks and pipes (e.g., Zhang
et al., 2008), which will lead to feed uctuations of DMCs.
 Severe wearing of pump and pipe walls: It is known that pump
and pipe could be severely worn by coal and magnetite particles
in coal plants. For example, there are normally two sets of
pumps available. If one of these is worn out, the other can be
used immediately. The worn pump will then be replaced without stopping the operation of DMCs. However, during the lifetime of the pump, the capability of the pump would vary with
the wear rate of the pump which depends on particle properties, operational condition and pump wall material (Finnie,
1960). Therefore, the precise control of the system also depends
on precise prediction of the wear rate of pump and pipe walls,
which is however not available now. This problem will also
cause uctuations of DMC feed.

Chu et al., 2009a, 2010; Wang et al., 2009a; Zhou et al., 2010).
Therefore, only a brief description of the model is given in this
work.
Recognising that the ow in a DMC is quite complicated, the
modelling was divided into three steps, as shown in Fig. 2. The rst
two steps are devoted to solving the medium slurry ow and the
third step particle ow. The continuum medium ow is calculated
from the continuity and the NavierStokes equations based on the
local mean variables dened over a computational cell. These are
given by

In this work, in order to enrich the data base of the understanding of DMCs, the system instability in a DMC is investigated in
terms of the effect of the uctuations of coal mass owrate at
the DMC feed using a CFDDEM approach.

2. Simulation method
The mathematical formulation of the CFDDEM model has been
well documented in literature (Xu and Yu, 1997; Zhu et al., 2007;

@qf e
r  qf eu 0
@t

And

@qf eu
r  qf euu rP  Fpf r  es qf eg r  qf u0 u0
@t

where e, u, u , t, qf, P, Fpf , s, and g are, respectively, porosity, mean

and uctuating uid velocity, time, uid density, pressure, volumetric uidparticle interaction force, uid viscous stress tensor, and
Pkcell
acceleration due to gravity. Fpf V 1
i1 f pf ;i , where fpf,i is the
cell
total uid force on particle i, kcell is the number of particles in a
CFD cell, and Vcell is volume of the CFD cell. qu0 u0 is the Reynolds
stress term due to turbulence and solved by the Reynolds Stress
Model (RSM) provided in commercial CFD software Fluent while

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the modelling approach.

37

K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

turbulence modication due to the presence of particles is not considered in this work.
The ow patterns derived by solving Eqs. (1) and (2) represent
the mixture ow of medium and air. According to the work of
Wang et al. (2007, 2009a), the CFD modelling of medium and air
ow was divided into two steps, as shown in Fig. 2. In Step 1, only
air and slurry with certain density are considered. The turbulence
was modelled using the RSM, and the volume of fraction (VOF)
model used to describe the interface between the medium and
the air core. In VOF, the two phases are treated immiscible and
modelled by solving a single set of momentum equations and
tracking the volume fraction of each of the uids throughout the
domain. Both the slurry and air phases have homogeneous viscosity and density respectively. At this stage, the primary position of
the air core and the initial velocity distribution were obtained.
The method is similar to that used for modelling multiphase ow
in hydrocyclones (Wang et al., 2007; Wang and Yu, 2010). In Step
2, six additional phases were introduced to describe the behaviour
of magnetite particles with different sizes. The multiphase model
was changed from the VOF to the Mixture model. A model was also
introduced to account for viscosity variation as a function magnetite particle size (Ishii and Mishima, 1984). Detailed density and
velocity distributions of different phases were obtained at the
end of this step. The details of the medium ow calculation can
be found elsewhere (Wang et al., 2007, 2009a).
In the third step as shown in Fig. 2, the ow of coal particles can
be determined from the uid ow patterns obtained above, using
either the LPT or the DEM method (Cundall and Strack, 1979). In
this work, DEM was used. A particle in a uid can have two types
of motion: translational and rotational, both obeying Newtons second law of motion. During its movement, the particle may collide
with its neighbouring particles or with the wall and interact with
the surrounding uid, through which momentum is exchanged.
At any time t, the equations governing the translational and rotational motions of particle i in this multi-phase ow system are:
k

mi

i
X
dv i
f c;ij f d;ij
f pf ;i mi g
dt
j1

and
k

Ii

i
dxi X
Tc;ij Tr;ij

dt
j1

where mi, Ii, vi and xi are, respectively, the mass, moment of inertia,
translational and rotational velocities of particle i. The forces involved are: the particleuid interaction force, fpf,i, gravitational
force, mig, and interparticle forces between particles i and j. The torques include the interparticle torque Tc,ij and rolling friction torque
Tr,ij. For multiple interactions, the interparticle forces and torques
are summed for ki particles interacting with particle i. fpf,i is the total particleuid interaction forces, which is the sum of various particleuid forces including viscous drag force and pressure gradient
force (PGF) in the current case. Trial simulations indicated that
other particleuid forces, such as virtual mass force and lift force,
can be ignored. The uid properties used to calculate the particle
uid interaction forces are those relating to the individual phases
in the mixture, i.e., water, air and magnetite particles of different
sizes. For simplicity, the effect of lubrication effect on particleparticle interaction and particle dispersion due to turbulence are not
considered. The details of the calculation of the forces in Eqs. (1)
(4) are shown in Table 1. They were used in many previous studies,
as summarised by Zhu et al. (2007).
The two-way coupling of DEM and CFD is numerically achieved
as follows. At each time step, DEM provides information, such as
the positions and velocities of individual particles, for the evaluation of porosity and volumetric particleuid interaction forces
in a computational cell. CFD then uses this data to determine the
uid ow eld, from which the particleuid interaction forces
acting on individual particles are determined. Incorporation of
the resulting forces into DEM produces information about the motion of individual particles for the next time step.
The principles of CFDDEM were well established, particularly
after the recent work of Zhou et al. (2010). The implementation
of CFDDEM models are usually made by developing in-house
codes. For complicated ow systems, the code development for
the solution of uid phase could be very time-consuming. In the
past, some attempts were made to extend the capability of CFD
DEM model from simple to complicated systems. In particular, taking advantage of the available CFD development, a DEMCFD model has been extended by Chu and Yu (2008a) with Fluent as a
platform, achieved by incorporating a DEM code and a coupling
scheme between DEM and CFD into Fluent through its User Dened Functions (UDFs). The applicability of this development was
demonstrated in the study of the particleuid ow in different
ow systems including pneumatic conveying bend (Chu and Yu,
2008b), drug inhaler (Tong et al., 2010), gas cyclone (Chu et al.,

Table 1
Components of forces and torques acting on particle i.
Forces and torques

Symbols

Normal forces

Tangential forces

Contact

fcn,ij

Damping

fdn,ij

Contact

fct,ij

Equations
p
 31E v 2 2Ri d3=2
n n

p1=2
3m
E
i
cn p21v 2 Rdn
v n;ij


ls f cn;ij
jdt j



3=2 
minfjdt j;dt;max g
1 1
dt
dt;max

Damping

fdt,ij


p1=2
1dt =dt;max
ct 6mi ls f cn;ij
v t;ij
dt;max

Torque

Rolling
Friction

Tij
Mij

Ri  (fct,ij + fdt,ij)
^i
lr f cn;ij x

Body force

Gravity

Gi

Particleuid interaction force

Viscous drag force

fd,i

mi g

2
qf jui vi jui vi pd2i b
4:8
0:63 Re
0:5
4 ei
2

Pressure gradient force

fpg,i

Vp,irP

p;i

where: n RRii ; v ij v j  v i xj  Rj  xi  Ri ; v n;ij v ij  n  n;.

d q e ju v j
^i x
v t;ij v ij  n  n; x
.
x ; Rep;i
l
i
i

f i

Pkcell
h
i
Vi
1:5log Rep;i 2
; e 1  DVi1cell .
b 3:7  0:65 exp 
2
f

38

K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

Fig. 3. Schematic drawing of the uctuation of M:C ratio with time according to the
sine function.

2011), circulating uidized bed (Chu and Yu, 2008a) and dense
medium cyclone (Chu et al., 2009a,b, 2010). This approach is also
used in this work.
3. Simulation conditions
The DMC considered in this work is, for convenience, similar to
that used in the previous experimental (Rong, 2007) and numerical
(Chu et al., 2009b) studies. The geometric parameters and mesh
representation of the DMC are shown in Fig. 1b and c. The DMC

has a square and involute inlet. It is divided into 80,318 hexahedral

cells for the CFD computation, with trial numerical results indicating that a greater number does not change the solution greatly. The
DMC is operated at an orientation angle of 10 (the orientation angle is dened as the angle between the axis of the DMC and horizontal axis, as shown in Fig. 4). The operational parameters used
in the simulation are summarised in Table 2. The pressure at the
two outlets (vortex nder and spigot) is 1 atm (101.325 kPa). For
simplicity, only particles of mono-size are considered and all coal
particles are assumed to be spherical. Even under such simplied
conditions, the simulations are computationally very intensive.
On average, each run of simulation in this work lasted for about
5 months on a single CPU server (e.g., Dell PowerEdge 2950), with
memory requirement of about 800 M.
In practice, solid uctuation could be irregular. In this work, for
simplicity and as the rst step to study the effect of uctuations,
regular solid uctuation is considered. In particular, the mediumto-coal (M:C) ratio by volume at the inlet is made to uctuate with
time according to the sine function in mathematics while the mass
ow rate of the medium is kept constant. Fig. 3 shows a schematic
drawing of the uctuation of M:C ratio with time. In this gure,
uctuation amplitude (50% in the gure) is the maximum variation
divided by the threshold value. Fluctuation period (5 s in the

Fig. 4. Snapshots showing the spatial distribution of particles at t = 60 s (I) and time-averaged solids concentration (II) at a central section of the DMC (normal to the inlet of
the DMC) when the M:C uctuation period is constant (=30 s) for different M:C uctuation amplitudes: (a), 10%; (b), 30%; and (c), 50%.

Table 2
Operational parameters used in the simulations.
Phase

Parameter

Symbol

Units

Value

Solid

Density
Particle diameter
Rolling friction coefcient
Sliding friction coefcient
Poissons ratio
Youngs modulus
Damping coefcient
Particle velocity at inlet

kg/m3
mm
mm

N/m2

m/s

12002200
25
0.005
0.3
0.3
1  107
0.3
3.8

kg/m3
kg/m/s
m/s

1.225
1.8  105
3.9

kg/m3
kg/m/s
m/s

998.2
0.001
3.9
4945
10 (4.0%), 20 (3.4%), 30 (1.9%), 40 (1.5%), 50 (1.3%) and 80 (1.1%)
Ishii and Mishima (1984)
3.9
1550

di

lr
ls
m
E
c

Gas

Density
Viscosity
Velocity at inlet

q
l

Water

Density
Viscosity
Velocity at inlet

q
l

Magnetite

Density
Sizes (volume fractions in slurry)
Viscosity
Velocity at inlet

kg/m3
lm
Pa s
m/s

Density

kg/m3

Medium

39

K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

Table 3
M:C ratio uctuation period and amplitude in runs 126.
Run no.

Fluctuation period (s)

Fluctuation amplitude (%)

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26

0
5
10
20
30
40
50
30

0.5
1
2
3
4
5
6
15
30
30

60

10
20
30
40
50
10
20
30
40
50

gure) is the time duration for one periodical uctuation. Fluctuation period can also be expressed as uctuation frequency (=1/period = 0.2 in the gure).
After trial simulations, in total 26 runs of simulation are carried
out, as shown in Table 3. The initial (at t = 0 s) M:C ratio is 11 for all
of the runs. In runs 17, the effect of uctuation amplitude is studied when the uctuation period is kept constant at 2 s. In runs 8
16, the effect of uctuation period is studied when the uctuation
amplitude is kept constant at 30%. In runs 1726, the effect of uctuation amplitude is studied under two constant uctuation periods (30 and 60 s).
The simulations are all unsteady or at least, dynamic, undertaken by the unsteady solver in Fluent. The ow of waterair ow
is rstly solved to reach a dynamic steady state that is dened as
the state when the ow eld does not change signicantly with
time. Then, the ow of a mixture of water, air, magnetite particles
is solved to reach a dynamic steady state. Finally, the ow of coal
particles is effected. This is done by continuously injecting coal
particles from the inlet. The number of particles injected in a given
time is calculated so as to match the pre-set M:C ratio. At the
beginning of the injection of coal particles, the medium ow may
change signicantly due to the impact of solids. After some time,
the medium ow can reach another dynamic steady ow state
(for example, see Fig. 7). In order to get the partition performance
of coal particles, the information of coal particles exiting from the
overow is collected during the period of dynamic steady ow
state (approx. 30 s in this work).

4. Results and discussion

4.1. Model validation
As described in Section 2, the proposed modelling involves a
few steps. This is because of the complexity of DMC ow and the
absence of experimental studies reported. On the other hand, this
step-wise approach offers a way to use the existing data in verifying the proposed model.

The proposed model for Step 1 is actually the same as that used
in the modelling of the gasliquid ow in a hydrocyclone. To validate this approach, the experimental data of Hsieh (1988) was
used. The measured results are in good agreement with those measured, as reported elsewhere (Wang et al., 2007). Step 2 adds the
medium, i.e., magnetite particles, into consideration. To date, there
is no data about the velocity proles of such particle phases. What
is available is the medium density distribution, measured by Subramanian (2002b). The simulated proles are very much similar to
that measured, as reported by Wang et al. (2009a). In Step 3, DEM
was added to the model to simulate the ow of coal on the base of
the developed CFD model. The simulated partition performance of
coal particles of different sizes was compared favourably with the
experiments (Chu et al., 2009b).
The results reported in this work are not directly validated since
there is no suitable experimental data available. However, considering the model used has previously been validated in many aspects, the results presented in this work should be valid at least
qualitatively.
4.2. Overall evaluation of the effect of uctuation amplitude and
period
It is found in the simulation that, when the uctuation frequency is high, both the coal and medium ow are not sensitive
to the variation of uctuation amplitude and period. However,
when the uctuation frequency is low or the uctuation period is
longer than 30 s, the effect of uctuation amplitude is obvious. In
the following, only the results from runs 1721 will be analysed
since the results from runs 116 are not as sensitive and the results
from runs 2226 are quite similar to those from runs 1721.
Figs. 4 and 5 show some snapshots of both medium and coal
ows for different M:C ratio uctuation amplitude at t = 60 s when
the uctuation period is kept constant at 30 s. As shown in Fig. 4I,
generally, the ow patterns of particles for different M:C ratio uctuation amplitudes are all consistent with the earlier identied
phenomenon that low density coal particles accumulate mainly
in the upper part of the DMC and exit from overow through vortex nder while high density particles mainly move downwards to
the underow along the cyclone wall. It can also be found in the
gure that particles are in closer contact to the bottom walls of
the DMC than the upper walls due to the effect of gravity. There
is no obvious trend of the effect of solids uctuation amplitude
on the solids ow pattern as shown in Fig. 4I. Nonetheless, an obvious trend can be observed from Fig. 4II. It can be seen that the
time-averaged solids concentration increases sightly especially at
the cone region of the DMC when the solids uctuation amplitude
increases. This will lead to the variation of medium ow and interaction forces in that region, as discussed in the following.
Fig. 5 shows that the medium ow at the spigot is obviously affected as uctuation amplitude increases. As the uctuation amplitude increases, Fig. 5I shows that the swirling tangential velocity at
the spigot region becomes quite unstable; Fig. 5II shows that the
upward ow of the air-core is weaker especially at the upper cone
section, which suggests that the air-core may break; Fig. 5III shows
that the radial velocity of the medium phase becomes slightly
more unstable, i.e., the number of the dipole ow is increased;
Fig. 5IV shows that the high density ring under the vortex nder
wall is enhanced.
Particleparticle interaction was previously found to affect the
partition performance (Chu et al., 2009a) and is quantied by use
of the so called Time Averaged Collision Intensity (TACI) in this
work, dened by

PtT 0 T s Pkm
TACI

tT 0

i1 jf cn;i

f dn;i f ct;i f dt;i j

V s  Ts

40

K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

Fig. 5. Spatial distributions of tangential (I), radial (II), axial (III) velocities, and density (IV) of medium phase at a central section of the DMC (the section is parallel to the inlet
of the DMC) at t = 60 s when the M:C uctuation period is constant (=30 s) for different M:C uctuation amplitudes: (a), without coal; (b), 10%; (c), 30%; and (d), 50%.

K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

41

Fig. 6. Spatial distributions of the time-averaged particleparticle (I) and particlewall (II) interaction intensity when the M:C ratio uctuation period is constant (=30 s) for
different M:C uctuation amplitude: (a), 10%; (b), 30%; and (c), 50%. (I) is at a central section being normal to the inlet of the DMC.

Fig. 7. Variation of total mass of solids residing in the DMC with time when the
uctuation period is 30 s for different M:C ratio uctuation amplitudes.

where Vs is the volume of a sample cell, Ts and T0 are the sampling

period and sampling starting time respectively, km is the number of
particles contacting with each other at a given time. In the calculation, this is done by dividing the DMC, i.e., the computational domain, into many small elements and TACI is calculated for each
element. Physically, it can be understood as the particleparticle
interaction forces per unit volume per unit time.
The particlewall interaction force relates to the wear of DMC
walls which also affect the separation performance of a DMC. For
convenience, it is quantied in a way similar to the concept of TACI
dened in Eq. (5). However, the cell volume in the equation is replaced by (wall) area to give the interaction between particles
per unit area per unit time.
Fig. 6I shows that the intensity of the TACI of particleparticle
interaction increases obviously at the spigot region with the uctuation amplitude. This suggests that the separation of near-gravity

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K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

Fig. 8. Comparison of the time variations between M:C ratio at the inlet of the DMC and the total mass of solids residing in the DMC when the M:C ratio uctuation period is
30 s and amplitude is 50%.

(a)

(b)

Fig. 9. Variation of Ep (a) and cut density (b) with time when the M:C ratio
uctuation period is 30 s and amplitude is 50% and the sampling time intervals is
3 s.

particles may be affected more by uctuations since near-gravity

particles commonly accumulate in that region. Fig. 6II shows that
for all of the uctuation amplitudes the particlewall interaction
is intense at the spigot region and the outside wall of the inlet.
Nonetheless, it is not so sensitive to M:C ratio uctuations, which
can be explained by Fig. 12b in which the total particlewall interaction force have both the highest and lowest points when the uctuation amplitude is 50% (this means the averaged value will be
similar to each other for all of the three uctuation amplitudes).
4.3. Dynamics analysis
Section 4.2 only shows some snapshots of the ow and interaction forces for different uctuation amplitude. Actually, the uctuation is essentially a dynamic process which should also be
analysed with time. In this section, the dynamics of the ow will
be analysed.

Fig. 7 shows the variation of the total mass of solids residing in

the DMC for different M:C ratio uctuation amplitude. It can be
seen that they all have a similar uctuation period to that of the
M:C ratio and the uctuation amplitude of total mass of solids increases with that of the M:C ratio. It can also be seen that the total
mass of solids at the rst peak (occurring at about t = 12) is lower
than that of the second and third ones (occurring at about t = 40
and 70 s respectively), suggesting that the ow reaches its dynamic
steady ow state after about t = 40 s.
Fig. 8 compares the variation of M:C ratio with the total mass of
solids in the DMC. Generally speaking, it is expected that the total
mass of solids will be high when the M:C ratio is low. This is largely
the case shown in the gure. However, it can be seen that there is a
delay between the lowest M:C ratio and the highest total mass. The
delay is about 5 s at the beginning and then stabilizes at 2.5 s. The
delay is longer at the rst period because the ow has not reached
dynamic steady ow state (dened as the state when the general
ow character does not change much with time). The delay actually suggests that the responding time of the total solids mass
residing in the system to the variation of feed at the DMC inlet is
about 2.5 s when the dynamic steady ow state is reached.
The performance of the DMC is normally evaluated by calculating separation density (D50) and Ecart probable (Ep) (Wood, 1990).
D50 is dened as the density of particles that have equal probability
of reporting to either underow or overow. Ep = (D75  D25)/2,
where D75 and D25 are the densities for which 75% and 25% of feed
particles report to underow respectively.
Fig. 9 shows the variation of both Ep and cut density (D50) with
time. Note that Ep and D50 can only be calculated for a period of
time which should be long enough to avoid statistic error. The
sampling time used in current work is 15 s. Trial tests have shown
that the trends would be disordered when the sampling time is less
than 9 s. Fig. 9a shows that Ep increases initially with time and
then reaches a plateau after t = 50 s. It also increases slightly with
increase of the uctuation amplitude of the M:C ratio. Fig. 9b
shows that D50 uctuates in a similar period with that of the M:C
ratio. The gure also shows that as the increase of the uctuation
amplitude of the M:C ratio, the peak of D50 increases slightly but
the dip of D50 decreases obviously, especially at the second dip
(occurring at about t = 55 s). From this gure it seems that the simulation should be carried out even longer to generate the third dip
of D50, and then a clearer trend may be observed. However, it is
quite difcult to do so since the current simulations have already
been running for 1 year.
Fig. 10a shows the variation of the pressure drop and M:C ratio
with time. It can be seen that the uctuation of the pressure drop is
high when the M:C ratio is low. This should be because there are
more particles owing into the DMC when the M:C ratio is low

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K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

(a)
50%

30%

10%

(b)

(a)
50%

30%

10%

Fig. 10. Variation of pressure drop (a) and medium split (b) with time when the
M:C ratio uctuation period is 30 s and amplitude is 50%.

(b)
Fig. 12. The temporal variations of total particleparticle interaction force (a) and
total particlewall interaction force (b) for different M:C ratio uctuation amplitude
when the M:C ratio uctuation period is 30 s. The forces are both normalised by
dividing particle gravity.

(a)

(b)
Fig. 11. The temporal variations of total pressure gradient force (a) and total drag
force (b) when the M:C ratio uctuation period is 30 s and amplitude is 50%. The
forces are both normalised by dividing particle gravity.

and the pressure tends to uctuate more when there are more
particles in the system. This gure also suggests that the recorded
variation of pressure drop can be used to deduct the variation of
feed at the inlet of the DMC. Fig. 10b shows that the medium split

is largely in phase with the M:C ratio. A noticeable nding is that

the medium split is high (=83%) at t = 0 s. After loading particles,
the split generally decreases and reaches maximum value of
81.5% at t = 20 and 53 s. This suggests that under current conditions the decrease of M:C ratio will decrease the medium split.
Figs. 11 and 12 show the major forces that decide the movement of coal particles. The forces are all normalised by dividing
particle gravity. Fig. 11 shows that both total pressure gradient
and drag forces are about 180 out of phase with the M:C ratio at
the DMC inlet. It can also be seen from the gure that the magnitude of the total pressure gradient force is 10 times that of the total
drag force, indicating pressure gradient force is a dominant force in
the system. Fig. 12 shows that when the uctuation amplitude of
the M:C ratio at the DMC inlet increases, the uctuation amplitude
of both the total particleparticle and particlewall interaction
forces increase. It suggests that if there are more uctuations in
the feed, there could be more wearing of DMC walls and particle
breakage due to instantaneous stronger particlewall and particleparticle interaction forces.
5. Conclusions
A two-way coupled CFDDEM model has been developed and
used to study the effect of M:C ratio uctuation at the inlet of a
DMC. In general, the ow in a DMC is not sensitive to high uctuation frequency (e.g., uctuation period is 26 s). However, when

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K.W. Chu et al. / Minerals Engineering 33 (2012) 3445

the uctuation frequency is low, e.g., both particle and medium

ow are obviously affected, especially at the cone region of the
DMC. The major ndings are summarised below:
 For the ow of coal particles, Ep increases slightly with the
increase of uctuation amplitude of the M:C ratio. Both D50
and the total mass of solids uctuate with time in a similar frequency with that of the M:C ratio and their amplitudes increase
with that of the M:C ratio. There is a delay between the lowest
point of the M:C ratio and the highest point of the total mass of
solids residing in the system. The duration of the delay is about
5 s at the beginning and then become stable at about 2.5 s.
 For the ow of the medium phase, as the increase of the uctuation amplitude of the M:C ratio, the air-core tends to break at
the spigot region and the tangential velocity becomes more
unstable at the spigot region. It suggests that the separation
of particles there (e.g., near gravity particles) will be more
affected. The instantaneous uctuation amplitude of the pressure drop is high when the M:C ratio is low and the medium
split is largely in phase with the M:C ratio.
 For the interaction forces, the uctuation of both total pressure
gradient and drag forces is largely out of phase with that of the
M:C ratio. The time-averaged particleparticle interaction
intensity increases at the spigot region with increase of the
M:C ratio uctuation amplitude. The uctuation amplitude of
both particleparticle and particlewall interaction forces
increases with that of the M:C ratio.
 The ow inside the DMC has generally a similar uctuation period to that of the M:C ratio at the inlet. Therefore, particles with
a longer residence time in the DMC will experience more uctuations. This suggests that near-gravity particles that have a long
residence time in the DMC would be more signicantly affected
by feed uctuations than low and/or high density particles.
The current work demonstrates that the CFDDEM approach
should be a useful tool to study the instabilities in DMCs. However,
it should be noted that, as the rst step of the study of instabilities
in DMCs, the current work was conducted under simplied conditions such as mono-size (25 mm) particles, regular (sine) uctuation pattern and high M:C ratio conditions. Further studies under
more realistic uctuation conditions are necessary in order to develop a more comprehensive picture about the DMC uctuation
in association with ow instability. For example, it is important
to investigate the original causes (e.g., segregation of solids in
pipes) of system instability, which would produce strategies to
minimize system instabilities.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the Australian Coal Association Research Program (ACARP) and Australia Research Council (ARC) for
the nancial support of this work, and to the industrial monitors
for helpful discussion and suggestions.
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