Implementation of a borescopic technique in a conical spouted bed for tracking spherical and irregular particles

Abstract

A methodology based on the borescopic technique has been developed and validated for tracking solid movement within a conical spouted bed. The procedure developed and fine-tuned allows monitoring the descending and ascending optical flow of both spherical and irregular particles in the annulus (dense zone) and spout (dilute zone) in the bed. A high speed camera (up to 16,000 fps) fitted with a fiber optic continuous light source was used for recording, and an image treatment algorithm modified and adapted to account for differences in particle shape and bed density (dilute or dense) was applied to the registered data. The procedure allows gathering information on the velocity of particles in a wide range of sizes, from a few millimeters (dp¯=7 mm) to micrometers (dp¯=93 μm).