Title

Force on a single slat during the start-up process of a fluidized bed

Conference Dates

May 22-27, 2016

Abstract

Internal baffles made of multiple slats are widely employed in the industrial fluidized-bed reactors to split bubbles and improve lateral bubble distribution to enhance gas-solids contact, and meanwhile suppress gas/solids back-mixing to optimize their residence time distributions, and ultimately to achieve good product selectivity and higher profitability. However, as fluidized-bed reactors are often required to be operated continuously for years, the long-period reliability of the baffles immersed in bed is also an important issue. Therefore, detailed information of forces acting on the baffles under different operating conditions is very important for their proper structure and strength design. During our past cold model experiment, we once found by chance that a steel probe with OD 20 mm was bent in a fluidized bed of ID 800 mm during the start-up process of the bed. This indicates a high short-term force and a potential danger during the start-up period of the bed, e.g. when sudden power-down or stopping of the blower happens, that may impair the reliability of immersed baffles in industrial fluidized reactors.

In this study, we investigated the force acting on a tested slat during the start-up process of a fluidized bed systematically. The experiment was carried out in a cold model fluidized bed with a square cross section of 300 mm×300 mm. The solids material in the fluidized bed was silica sand particles belonging to typical Geldart B particles. A horizontal slat of 50 mm (height) ×300 mm (width) ×2 mm (thickness) was immersed in the bed during tests. The force acting on the slat was measured by adhering two strain gauges on the surface of both ends of the slat. The influencing factors considered in this study included superficial gas velocity, inclination angle and installation height of the slat.

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