Hydrodynamic Behavior of a Binary Solids Fluidized Bed

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the hydrodynamic behavior of a fluidized bed containing mixtures of solids of different sizes and densities. The transition velocity from bubbling to turbulent fluidization and solids holdup of the dense bed in different fluidization regimes were experimentally determined. The onset velocity to turbulent fluidization was found to increase with increasing fraction of coarse solids. Solids holdups changed differently with gas velocity and fraction of coarse particles in bubbling and turbulent fluidization regimes. As a quantitative measure for describing the complexity or the self-affine property of the time series signals, a fractal analysis was introduced and related to the hydrodynamics of the fluidized beds. A correlation to predict the transition velocity of a binary solids fluidized bed was also developed in this paper.