Hydrodynamics Studies in a Liquid Solid Circulating Fluidized Bed of Varying Liquid Viscosity

Abstract

To design an industrial liquid solid circulating fluidized bed system properly, it is important that the hydrodynamics be studied first. So far investigations have been carried out in a liquid solid circulating fluidized bed (LSCFB) with tap water as the liquid phase. There is still limited understanding on how particles are circulated in LSCFB with viscous fluids. The aim of our work was to characterize the hydrodynamics in a LSCFB with varying viscosity. Experiments were conducted in a fluidized bed riser of 0.1 m diameter by 2.4 m height with different viscous liquids, to study its effects of operating parameters namely; primary velocity, secondary velocity, total velocity, on the hydrodynamics characteristics of the LSCFB in terms of solid holdup, solid circulation rate and particle velocity. Experiments were conducted using water and glycerol at different concentration. The solid particle resin of 0.5 mm diameter was used for the experiment. The results indicate that the solid hold up in the riser is axially uniform for viscous liquids and increases with increase in auxiliary velocity. The average solid holdup found to decrease with increase in total velocity and increases with increase in liquid viscosity as the critical transitional velocity decreases with the increase in viscosity. The solid circulation rate is found to increase with increase in total velocity and auxiliary velocity, and also increases with increasing viscosity.