Fluidization characteristics of tobacco particles in fluidized bed

To study the drying principle of pneumatic drying, optimize the technological parameters and improve and develop the tobacco drying equipments, the process of tobacco fluidization in a fluidized bed is studied. Using the established experimental equipment, the effects of air flow rate and material flow rate on the particle distribution in the fluidized bed are analyzed. The Euler model is employed to simulate the process and the relative experimental verification and comparison are performed. The simulation results are in good agreemental with the experiment findings. The study shows that particle distribution in the fluidized bed is not uniform. The volume fraction of particles is usually dilute in the near-wall region, especially the four angle regions. The volume fractions in these regions are greater than the other parts of the bed. The results also indicate the clustering phenomenon and the relative clustering areas. According to these results, an improvement of the fluidized bed is brought out and the relative numerical experiment is performed. The result shows that clustering phenomenon can be reduced by the improvement, which provides a useful way to solve the clustering problem.