In this work, a method to predict the surface structures of particles produced by fluidized bed spray layering granulation using the CFD-DEM method was developed. A simple state-variable/event tracking approach was implemented to capture indirect quantifiers of the progression of structure-forming microprocesses. The approach was tested on a demonstration case where a particle core is coated with sodium benzoate solution. The experiment was scaled-up by a factor of eight to pilot-scale using the developed method.

This work provides a method for utilizing particle-scale simulations method like the coupled Computational Fluid Dynamics-Discrete Element Method (CFD-DEM) to predict the properties of particles produced in scaled-up apparatuses based on laboratory-scale experiments by correlating the conditions that particle experience to the properties they develop.

Spray coating in spouted bed occurs on the time-scale of hours, but the most sophisticated simulation methods can only cover minutes per day. The Recurrence CFD (rCFD) method was used to get around this time-scale issue by replacing computational complexity with memory complexity.

In this study, the proper way for accurately simulating spouted beds with split inlets was developed and validated.