Empirical Relationships for the Terminal Settling Velocity of Spheres in Cylindrical Columns

Abstract

In many chemical processes, the settling of solid particles in a suspension is of fundamental importance. In this work, the terminal settling velocity of spherical particles is experimentally investigated in cylindrical columns in the range of Reynolds numbers 2 ≤ Ret∞ ≤ 185 and of particle-to-column diameter ratios, λ, of ≤ 0.9. Finding that none of the existing equations relating the terminal settling velocity to the diameter ratio is fully satisfactory, the authors propose two new empirical calculation methods which enable the terminal settling velocity to be determined in the whole range of both Reynolds number, Ret∞, and diameter ratio, λ