FLUIDIZATION

When a liquid or a gas is passed at very low velocity up through a bed of solid particles, the
particles do not move. If the fluid velocity is steadily increased, the pressure drop and the
drag on individual particles increase, and eventually the particles start to move and
become suspended in the fluid.

The terms "fluidization" and "fluidized bed" are used to describe the condition of fully
suspended particles, since the suspension behaves like a dense fluid. If the bed is tilted, the
top surface remains horizontal and large objects will either float or sink in the bed
depending on their density relative to the suspension. The fluidized solids can be drained
from the bed through pipes and valves just like a liquid, and this fluidity is one· of the main
advantages in the use of fluidization for handling solids.

Conditions for fluidization

Fig 3: Pressure drop and bed height vs. superficial velocity for a bed of solids.

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Consider a vertical tube partly filled with a fine granular material as shown schematically
in Fig. 3. The tube is open at the top and has a porous plate at the bottom to support the
bed of catalyst and to distribute the flow uniformly over the entire cross section.

Air is admitted below the distributor plate at a low flow rate and passes upward through
the bed without causing any particle motion. If the particles are quite small, flow in the
channels between the particles will be laminar and the pressure drop across the bed will be
proportional to the superficial velocity.

As the velocity is gradually increased, the pressure drop increases, but the particles do not
move and the bed height remains the same. At a certain velocity, the pressure drop across
the bed counterbalances the force of gravity on the particles or the weight of the bed, and
any further increase in velocity causes the particles to move. This is point A on the graph.

With a further increase in velocity, the particles become separated enough to move about
in the bed, and true fluidization begins (point B). Once the bed is fluidized, the pressure
drop across the bed stays constant, but the bed height continues to increase with
increasing flow. The bed can be operated at quite high velocities with very little or no loss
of solids, since the superficial velocity needed to support a bed of particles is much less
than the terminal velocity for individual particles.

If the flow rate to the fluidized bed is gradually reduced, the pressure drop remains
constant, and the bed height decreases, following the line BC which was observed for
increasing velocities. However, the final bed height may be greater than the initial value for
the fixed bed, since solids dumped in a tube tend to pack more tightly than solids slowly
settling from a fluidized state.

The pressure drop at low velocities is then less than in the original fixed bed. On starting up
again, the pressure drop offsets the weight of the bed at point B, and this point, rather than
point A, should be considered to give the minimum fluidization velocity, ṼOM· To measure
ṼOM, the bed should be fluidized vigorously, allowed to settle with the gas turned off, and
the flow rate increased gradually until the bed starts to expand.

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Minimum fluidizing velocity

An equation for the minimum fluidization velocity can be obtained by setting the pressure
drop across the bed equal to the weight of the bed per unit area of cross section, allowing
for the buoyant force of the displaced fluid: the equation is given by;

( )

At incipient fluidization, e is the minimum porosity eM. (If the particles themselves are
porous, ɛ is the external void fraction of the bed.) Thus

( )

The Ergun equation for pressure drop in packed beds is given by;

eqn 2

Applying Eqn 12 to the point of incipient fluidization gives a quadratic equation for the
minimum fluidization velocity ṼOM.

eqn 3

For very small particles, only the laminar-flow term of the Ergun equation is significant.
With NRe < 1, the equation for minimum fluidization velocity becomes.

eqn 3

The equation for NRe> 1000 is;

eqn 4

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Types of fluidization.

a) Particulate fluidisation

Type of fluidization where, the particles move farther apart and their motion becomes
more vigorous as the velocity is increased, but the average bed density at a given velocity
remains the same in all sections of the bed. It is characterized by a large but uniform
expansion of the bed at high velocities. Since the expansion is uniform, and the Ergun
equation, which applies to the fixed bed, might be expected to hold approximately for the
slightly expanded bed. The Ergun equation is given by;

Bubbling fluidisation

The expansion of the bed comes mainly from the space occupied by gas bubbles, since the
dense phase does not expand significantly with increasing total flow.

At high superficial velocities most of the gas passes through the bed as bubbles or voids
which are almost free of solids, and only a small fraction of the gas flows in the channels
between the particles. The particles move erratically and are supported by the fluid, but in
the space between bubbles, the void fraction is about the same as at incipient fluidization.

The non-uniform nature of the bed was at first attributed to aggregation of the particles,
and the term aggregative fluidization was applied; but there is no evidence that the
particles stick together, and the term bubbling fluidization is a better description of the
phenomenon. The bubbles that form behave much like air bubbles in water or bubbles of
vapor in a boiling liquid, and the term "boiling bed" is sometimes applied to this type of
fluidization.

Studies that account for the rates of heat or mass transfer or chemical reaction in a
bubbling bed often refer to the "two-phase theory of fluidization," in which the bubbles are
one phase and the dense bed of suspended particles is the second phase.

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The behavior of a bubbling fluidized bed depends very strongly on the number and size of
the gas bubbles, which are often hard to predict. The average bubble size depends on;

 the nature and size distribution of the particles

 the type of distributor plate
 the superficial velocity
 the depth of the bed.

Bubbles tend to coalesce and grow as they rise through the fluidized bed, and the maximum
stable bubble size may be several inches to a few feet in diameter. If a small diameter
column is used with a deep bed of solids, the bubbles may grow until they fill the entire
cross section. Successive bubbles then travel up the column separated by slugs of solids.
This is called "slugging" and is usually undesirable because of pressure fluctuations in the
bed, increased entrainment, and difficulties in scaling up to larger units.

Applications of fluidization

Extensive use of fluidization began in the petroleum industry with the development of
fluid-bed catalytic cracking. Although the industry now generally uses riser or transport-
line reactors for catalytic cracking, rather than fluid beds, the catalyst regeneration is still
carried out in fluid-bed reactors, which are as large as 30 ft in diameter.

Fluidization is used in other catalytic processes, such as the synthesis of acrylonitrile, and
for carrying out solid-gas reactions. There is much interest in the fluidized-bed combustion
of coal as a means of reducing boiler cost and decreasing the emission of pollutants.

Fluidized beds are also used for roasting ores, drying fine solids, and adsorption of gases.

Fluidization can also be used for hydraulic or slurry transport and pneumatic conveying as
shown in fig 4.

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Fig 4: Pneumatic conveying system: (a) typical multiple-inlet system; (b) nozzle detail.

Advantages of fluidization

The chief advantages of fluidization are that the solid is vigorously agitated by the fluid
passing through the bed, and the mixing of the solids ensures that there are practically no
temperature gradients in the bed even with quite exothermic or endothermic reactions. The
violent motion of the solids also gives high heat-transfer rates to the wall or to cooling tubes
immersed in the bed. Because of the fluidity of the solids it is easy to pass solids from one
vessel to another.

Disadvantage

The main disadvantage of gas-solid fluidization is the uneven contacting of gas and solid.
Most of the gas passes through the bed as bubbles and directly contacts only a small
amount of solid in a thin shell, known as the bubble cloud, around the bubble. A small
fraction of the gas passes through the dense phase, which contains nearly all of the solid.
There is some interchange of gas between the bubbles and the dense phase by diffusion
and by turbulent processes such as bubble splitting and coalescence, but the overall
conversion of a gaseous reactant is generally much less than with uniform contacting at the
same temperature, as in an ideal plug-flow reactor.

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The extent of interchange between bubbles and the dense bed, as well as the rate of axial
mixing, may change with vessel diameter because of changes in the bubble size, so scaleup
of fluidized reactors is often uncertain. Other disadvantages, which are more easily dealt
with by proper design, are erosion of vessel internals and attrition of the solids. Most fluid
beds have internal or external cyclones to recover fines, but filters or scrubbers are often
needed also.

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