SEGREGATION IN CONICAL SPOUTED BEDS WITH BINARY AND TERNARY MIXTURES OF EQUIDENSITY SPHERICAL-PARTICLES

The versatility of conical spouted beds for stable treatment of binary and ternary mixtures of glass spheres has been proven. The segregation is much lower than that corresponding to other contact methods. It is noteworthy that the larger particles tend to describe trajectories in the upper part of the bed and that the maximum segregation corresponds to mixtures with the same proportion of different size particles. A quantitative treatment has been given to the segregation, which is similar to that proposed in the literature for fluidized beds, and consequently, correlations have been obtained for calculation of the mixing index as a function of the contactor geometric factors, of bed composition, and of air velocity.