As a result of shortage supply of oil resources, the process for the alternative coal-based fuel, dimethyl ether （DME）, has emerged as an important process in chemical engineering field. With the laboratory experiment data about DME synthesis and separation, the production process for DME with high purity is proposed when one-step synthesis of DME in slurry bed reactor from syngas is adopted. On the basis of experimental research and process analysis, the proper unit modules and thermophysical calculation methods for the simulation process are selected. Incorporated the experimentally determined parameters of reaction dynamic model for DME synthesis, regression constants of parameters in non-random two-liquid equation （NRTL） model for binary component in DME separation system with built-in properties model, .the process flowsheet, is.developed and simulated on the Aspen Plus platform. The simulation results coincide well with data obtained in laboratory experiment. Accordingly, the accurate simulation results offer useful references to similar equipment design and process operation optimization.
Computational Fluid Dynamics （CFD） has become an alternative method to experiments for understanding the fluid dynamics of multiphase flow. A two-fluid model, which contains additional terms in both the gas- and solid-phase momentum equations, is used to investigate the fluidization quality in a fluidized bed. A case study for quartz sand with a density of 2,660 kg/m^3 and a diameter of 500 μm, whose physical property is similar to a new kind of catalyst for producing clean fuels through the residue fluid catalytic cracking process, is simulated in a two-dimensional fluidized bed with 0.57 m width and 1.00 m height. Transient bubbling and collapsing characteristics are numerically investigated in the platform of CFX 4.4 by integrating user-defined Fortran subroutines. The results show that the fluidization and collapse process is in fair agreement with the classical theory of Geldart B classification, but the collapse time is affected by bubbles at the interface between the dense phase and freeboard.
