The Ergun equation is used to model the pressure drop for one dimensional flow through a fixed bed.

It is one of the most widely used equations for this situation, derived by Sabri Ergun in 1952. The term thats linearly proportional to the fluid velocity represents the vicious energy loss and the exponentially proportional term represents the inertial loss. As the Ergun equation was derived specifically for the modeling of a fixed bed reactor and this practical is investigating fluidized beds, we chose two other models in order to estimate the pressure drop in liquid fluidized beds. The Kozeny-Carman equation is used for flow under very viscous conditions. The other, the Burke-Plummer equation is used when viscous effects are not as important as inertial effects. As these models are simplifications of the Ergun equation it is unlikely that they would be a more accurate model. This is a graph of the general results we expect. At the minimum fluidization velocity the bed becomes fluidized and the fluid-particle mixture begins to behave as a fluid. The pressure drop plateaus and the bed height increases. The Ergun equation models a fixed bed so we expect it to be fairly accurate until the minimum fluidization velocity is reached as the bed is technically fixed up to this point .As you can see on the graph the pressure drop and bed height vs superficial Velocity are different for increasing velocity and decreasing velocitys as you can see in the diagram. This is because when the bed settles it forms a less densely packed system and the porosity in the structure differs to the initial situation. The Wen & Yu equation can be equated to the Ergun equation to give us a formula for the minimum fluidization velocity.