Hydrodynamic review on liquid–solid magnetized fluidized bed

Abstract

Abstract The magnetic field has been successfully used to intensify the liquid–solid contact performance in the fluidized bed, creating the magnetized fluidized bed (MFB). The MFBs with purely magnetizable particles and with the binary admixture of magnetizable and nonmagnetizable particles could be simply termed the pure MFB and admixture MFB, respectively. Their potential application in the chemical and biochemical industries has been thoroughly explored in the literature. However, a fundamental investigation on the hydrodynamics therein is far from sufficient, severely hindering the commercial application. For this reason, this review summarized the relevant findings, including (1) flow regime transition, (2) boundaries between two adjacent flow regimes, (3) unique features of the magnetically stabilized bed, (4) hysteresis phenomenon and bed voidage, (5) minimum fluidization velocity and terminal velocity, (6) numerical simulation and segregation of the admixture MFB, and (7) some explored applications. More importantly, the existing controversies and unsolved issues in this area were identified. Among others, the flow regime transition and unique hydrodynamic characteristics of each flow regime should be first clarified, only after which could the terminology describing all the flow regimes be unified and the results from different scholars be compared.