Hydrodynamics of beds of small particles in the voids of coarse particles

Uniformly sized particulate solids often fluidize poorly with bubbling and slugging. Slugging is a phenomenon associated with the geometry of the vessel, gas flow rate and properties of gas solid particles. It is severe with Geldart Group B particles especially in bed with high aspect ratio and beyond the minimum bubbling velocity. Geldart B particles fluidize well, but bubbles appear as soon as the operating gas velocity exceeds the minimum fluidization velocity. Fluidization of small Geldart B particles in the interstitial void space of large and stationary particles, called packing, overcomes these drawbacks and changes the hydrodynamic characteristics of the bed. Experiments were carried out to investigate these characteristics as a function of the size of the small particles, fraction of voids of packing filled by the small particles and bed wall temperature. Small particles in the voids of packing start to fluidize at a lower superficial velocity (flow-rate divided by empty bed cross-sectional area) than small particles in unary beds. This velocity decreases with increase in wall temperature. A correlation is proposed to estimate the minimum fluidization velocity of the small particles in the voids as a function of measurable variables.