SCHOOL OF CHEMICAL AND BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING

(Division of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering)

AY2015/16
CH3801
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Laboratory 5
CE4 Fluidization
Group Report

Name:

Group:

Jed Lee
Jeremiah Chen Congfa
Lee Jing Xin
Liu Zhengyi
Li Yilin
Nicholas Choo
Pearlyn Chiang
LA131

U1221181H
U1220932F
U1220004K
U1220974C
U1222054F
U1221418G

1. Introduction
1.1 Aim
The objective of this experiment was to study the principle and the behaviour of gas-solid
and water-solid fluidization with increasing and decreasing fluid velocity.

1.2 Abstract
Fluidization is a condition where a bed of packed particles possess fluid-like properties
when an upward-flowing fluid, either liquid or gas, passes through the voids within the
solid particles in a bed at a certain superficial velocity. It is used widely in chemical
processing industries for separations, rapid mass and heat transfer operations, and
catalytic reactions.
As shown in Figure 1a, the bed remains in a fixed state at low fluid velocity as drag
force on each particle is low. When the velocity increases, the drag force will begin to
counteract the gravitational force, causing the bed to expand in volume as the particles
move away from each other. It will eventually reach a critical value at which the upward
drag forces will exactly equal the downward gravitational forces, causing the particles to
become suspended within the fluid. At this point, the bed is said to be fluidized as
illustrates in Figure 1b and the critical velocity is commonly referred to as minimum
fluidization velocity and the voidage is defined as . The minimum fluidization
mf

velocity can be determined by measuring the pressure drop across the bed from high
superficial velocity to zero.

Figure 1. Schematic of Bed Expansion

In this experiment, Norwood fluidization bed setup was used to perform the fluidization
between solid-liquid and solid-gas system. The operating pressure was carried out at a
slightly higher than atmospheric pressure. There were a few assumptions made before
conducting the experiment. The true fluidization was occurred when the porosity of the
bed was at a minimum value. Furthermore, the particles used in the fluidized bed were
green beads and were assumed to be perfectly sphere in which the sphericity was unity.
The particles behaviour with increasing and decreasing fluid flow rate was observed and
plotted. In addition, the relationship between the bed pressure drop and bed height was
investigated and the comparison between the calculated and the observed pressure drop
was discussed in this report. The minimum fluidizing velocity Umf was then determined
from equation and compared with the experimental value.

1.3 Principles
Figure 2 shows the relationship between the pressure drop across the bed and the
superficial velocity for fluidization. As shown in Figure 2a, when superficial velocity
increases in the fixed bed, the pressure drop gradually increases while the bed height
remains fixed. The pressure drop will keep increasing as the superficial velocity increases
and will reach a maximum value before decreasing slightly. This is due to the additional
amount of energy needed to overcome the forces between the densely packed particles to
become fluidized. This amount of energy is to break the interlocking particles apart to
allow them to reach point of fluidization. Higher in velocity results in higher amount of
force to break the interlocking particles apart, hence causing an increase in the pressure
drop as well. This reflects in the curve with the velocity increasing, showing a small
peak. Once the force is strong enough to overcome the interlocking particles and break
them apart, the velocity will decrease slightly, and then the pressure drop will remain
constant with increasing velocity.

(a)

(b)

Figure 2. Graphs of Pressure Drop across Bed against (a) Increasing Superficial Velocity
and (b) Decreasing Superficial Velocity

In decreasing fluid velocity condition, the fluid will not reach the peak as no additional
forces are required to overcome the interlocking forces of the particles since the particles
are suspended in the fluid as shown in Figure 2b. The particles will only settle down to
the bed condition when the fluid velocity decreases to the minimum fluidization velocity.