Hydrodynamics of a spouted bed with a porous draft tube containing a small amount of finer particles

A small-size spouted bed with a porous draft tube was employed to obtain hydrodynamic data of binary mixtures of glass beads for a range of operating conditions and design factors. In this case, a small amount of finer particles was added mostly to the large majority of coarser particles. Under this condition, minimum spouting velocity, bed pressure drop, hold-up of solid particles within a draft tube, gas flow rate through the annulus and solids circulation rate were determined by changing the total gas flow rate and the mass fraction of finer particles as operating parameters, and by changing the height of the entrainment zone and the draft tube diameter as geometric parameters. The results show that the gas flow rate through the annulus increases by increasing the distance between the gas inlet nozzle and the bottom of the draft tube, that is, the height of the entrainment zone, but decreases with increasing draft tube diameter and mass fraction of finer particles. The porous draft tube shows a higher gas flow rate through the annulus than the non-porous draft tube, particularly in the case of the low height of the entrainment zone. The solids circulation rate increases with increasing gas velocity, the height of the entrainment zone and the porous draft tube diameter. Moreover, the porous draft tube leads to a higher solids circulation rate than the non-porous draft tube. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.