Paper Title
CFD-based Assessment of the Solids Flow Patterns in a TORoidal BED Reactor

Abstract
The TORoidal BED reactor or TORBED is a novel fluidized bed that induces centrifugal movement of the solids bed using a gas distributor with inclined inlets covering an annular space at the bed bottom. The TORBED reactor overcomes some drawbacks of fluidizing particulate biomass and plastic residues in conventional fluidized beds, e.g., handling a wide range of particle sizes and shapes. Additionally, the TORBED reactor improves bed uniformity and density, enhancing heat, mass, and momentum transfer rates. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is a powerful tool to study complex fluid phenomena in single and multiphase systems through numerical simulation. For example, CFD simulationsoffluidized beds show good agreement with experimental data. However, only a few CFD studies involve the TORBED reactor. This work aims to develop a CFD-based numerical simulation in the open-source software OpenFOAM®. Comparison of simulation with experimental dataallows estimating models' parameters and validating the CFD results. Furthermore, this work analyzesthe azimuthal and radial velocities of gas and solid phases and the solids centrifugal acceleration. Results show that maximum solids azimuthal velocity equal 0.87 m s-1 occurs at the lowest level and the central radius of the annular bed. The rotation of the bed is subjected to centrifugal accelerationslower than Earth's gravity.Both the radially inward drag force and outward centrifugal force contribute to the improved mixing of the bed. Keywords - Computational Fluid Dynamics, Toroidal Bed Reactor, Fluidized beds, Hydrodynamics, OpenFOAM.