Assessment of pressure drop in conical spouted beds of biomass by artificial neural networks and comparison with empirical correlations

Abstract

Pressure drop is an essential parameter in the operation of conical spouted beds (CSB) and depends on its geometric factors and materials used. Irregular materials, like biomass, are complex to treat and, unlike other gas–solid contact methods, CSB turn out to be a suitable technology for their treatment. Artificial neural networks were used in this study for the prediction of operating and peak pressure drops, and their performance has been compared with that of empirical correlations reported in the literature. Accordingly, a multi-layer perceptron network with backward propagation was used due to its ability to model non-linear multivariate systems. The fitting of the experimental data of both operating and peak pressure drop was significantly better than those reported in the literature, specifically in the case of the peak pressure drop, with R2 being 0.92. Therefore, artificial neural networks have been proven suitable for the prediction of pressure drop in CSB.