Experimental Studies on the Effect of the Particle Shape and Distributor Blade Overlap Angle on the Bed Pressure Drop in a Swirling Fluidized Bed

Swirling Fluidized Bed (SFB) is a newer variant of fluidized bed. Although it's been
investigated by many researchers, a good understanding of its hydrodynamics and
the effects of different design parameters on it is yet to be established. In fluidized
bed processes, bed pressure drop is crucial as it determines the power required. The
present work is an effort to investigate the effect of particle shape and distributor
blade overlap angle on bed pressure drop in a SFB. In this study, bed particles of
different shapes (cylindrical, spherical and oval) were used with different bed
weights (500g, 750g and lOOOg). The experiments were conducted with various
distributor blade overlap angles (9", 12", 15" and 18") at constant blade inclination of
1 0". The experimental set up used in this research is shown in Figure 12 and Figure
18. Batch experiments were carried out with increasing the bed weight from 500g to
1 OOOg in a step of 250g of bed particle for each shape and each distributor blade
overlap angle. The results obtained were tabulated. Graphs were plotted to show the
bed pressure drop variation with superficial velocity for each particle shape and
distributor overlap angle. Figure 22 until Figure 39 show the results of this
experiment. Result analysis confirmed that spherical particle has a higher bed
pressure drop among the three shapes. Besides that, distributor blade overlap angle of
9" gives higher bed pressure drop as well. Hence, particle with spherical shape and
blade overlap angle of9" influenced the bed pressure drop the most. In the meantime,
oval shape particles have lowest minimum fluidization velocity as compared to
cylindrical and spherical particle. As a conclusion, the research conducted proves the
superiority of SFB over conventional bed.