Coal beneficiation technology using gas-solid fluidized bed is a hot topic in recent decade, however its proper design and scale-up remain a great challenge due to the very complex gas-solid flow involved. To this end, an Eulerian-Lagrangian-Lagrangian (ELL) model (Zhang et al., Renewable Energy, 2019, 136:193-201) was used to intensify the coal beneficiation process, by systematically studying the effects of particle property, operating gas velocity, initial bed height, design of gas distributor and the size of fluidized bed. It was found that (i) coal beneficiation process can be improved significantly by using coarser beneficiated coal particles, adopting smaller initial bed height (or shallow fluidized bed) and/or operating at a properly selected gas velocity, all findings indicate that the process intensification can be realized via proper selection of operating conditions; (ii) the design of gas distributor was critical for process intensification and it should be designed properly to make the gas flow as uniform as possible; and (iii) there will be no scale-up effect, if ideally uniform gas flow at the inlet can be achieved. Present study demonstrates that computational fluid dynamics is a cost-effective tool for process intensification of gas-solid fluidized beds.

使用气固流化床的煤炭选矿技术是近十年来的热门话题，但是由于涉及非常复杂的气固流，其合理的设计和规模放大仍然是一个巨大的挑战。为此，通过系统地研究颗粒性质的影响，运行过程，使用了欧拉-拉格朗日-拉格朗日（ELL）模型（Zhang等人，Renewable Energy，2019，136：193-201）来强化煤的选矿过程。气体流速，初始床层高度，气体分配器设计和流化床尺寸。结果发现，（ⅰ）煤的选矿过程可以显著通过使用较粗的煤颗粒，采用较小的初始床高度（或浅流化床）提高和/或在适当选择的气体速度操作时，所有研究结果表明，过程强化可以通过的操作条件适当选择来实现; （ii）气体分配器的设计对于强化工艺至关重要，应适当设计以使气体流量尽可能均匀；（iii）如果可以在入口处实现理想的均匀气流，则不会产生放大效应。目前的研究表明，计算流体动力学是气固流化床过程强化的一种经济有效的工具。