Kaiqiao Wu

Kaiqiao Wu received his Bachelor degree in Chemical Engineering and Technology from East China University of Science and Technology in 2013 and his Master degree in Chemical Process Engineering from  University College London in 2014. He then continued his PhD in University College London with research area of fluidised beds and computational fluid dynamics.

Research project

Title: Pattern formation in pulsed fluidised beds.

Fluidized beds are one of the most challenging reactors in industry from the point of view of design, scale-up and control due to their chaotic dynamics. Fluidized bed engineering would be considerably simplified by imposing a more ordered structure in the reactor.

More than a decade ago, experimental measurements showed that by pulsing the gas flow entering the bottom distributor plate of a fluidized bed within a certain range of frequencies, a remarkably regular pattern of bubbles emerges, rather than the typical chaotic flow of bubbles similar to that in boiling water. This is especially clear in quasi-two dimensional beds (two vertical plates with a thin space filled with particles in between), in which a hexagonal array of bubbles rises. As the patterns are so robust, finding these regular patterns will allow us to test different Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes, like a fingerprint, which is of increasing relevance as CFD codes are more and more used in fluidized bed simulation and design for research and industrial applications.

Education

MSc in Chemical Engineering, University College London, 2014
BEng in Chemical Engineering and Technology, East China University of Science and Technology, China, 2013