Stochastic analysis of a three‐phase fluidized bed: Fractal approach

Abstract

AbstractThree‐phase fluidized beds have played important roles in various areas of chemical and biochemical processing. The characteristics of such beds are highly stochastic due to the influence of a variety of phenomena, including the jetting and bubbling of the fluidizing medium and the motion of the fluidized particles. A novel approach, based on the concept of fractals, has been adopted to analyze these complicated and stochastic characteristics. Specifically, pressure fluctuations in a gas‐liquid‐solid fluidized bed under different batch operating conditions have been analyzed in terms of Hurst's rescaled range (R/S) analysis, thus yielding the estimates for the so‐called Hurst exponent, H. The time series of the pressure fluctuations has a local fractal dimension of dFL = 2 − H. An H value of ½ signifies that the time series follows Brownian motion; otherwise, it follows fractional Brownian motion (FBM), which has been found to be the case for the three‐phase fluidized bed investigated.