Study of Air Jet Penetration in a Fluidized Bed

Abstract

This work presents experimental and numerical simulation results on secondary air jet penetration into a dense phase of a 2-D fluidized bed. Velocity measuring method and non-intrusive methods based on images were used in the experiments. Effects of secondary air nozzle size and angles, secondary air jet flow velocity and suspension density of the fluidized bed material on the air jet penetration were tested. The results show that with increasing of secondary air jet velocity, the jet range increases exponentially. Secondary air jet range decreases exponentially with increasing of average bed suspension density. The size of secondary air nozzle does not have significant impact on jet range. However, larger nozzle size may result in a lower velocity decay coefficient. It was also found the secondary air nozzle angle is not an independent parameter affecting jet range. The jet range may penetrate the most depth point into the fluidized bed with the angle of −30°. As a comparison, the numerical simulation was done with same parameters in the experiments. Comparison of experimental and numerical results shows good agreements.