Review of CFD-DEM Modeling of Wet Fluidized Bed Granulation and Coating Processes

Wet fluidized bed granulation and coating processes have been widely used in the pharmaceutical food industries. The complex gas–solid flow coupled with heat mass transfer such made it hard to form complete control over apparatuses. To serve better design, scaling-up, optimization of granulators coaters, underlying micro-scale mechanisms must be clarified. Computational fluid dynamics discrete element method (CFD-DEM) provides a useful tool study in-depth gas-solid hydrodynamics processes. This review firstly introduced fundamental theory CFD-DEM from governing equations, force calculation, coupling schemes. Then application simulating wet was presented. Specifically, research focus role resolving issues were discussed. Finally, outlook on development context given.