Spouting of Bidisperse Mixture of Particles: A CFD and Experimental Study

Abstract

Many spouted bed applications involve mixtures of particles of different sizes, shapes, or densities. Depending on the characteristics of the particle mixture, undesirable phenomena such as particle segregation may occur, mainly due to differences in terminal velocities. Thus, a better understanding of the fluid dynamics of particle mixtures is still needed in this field. In this work, experiments and computational simulations were performed to analyze some aspects of the fluid dynamics of segregation patterns in conical spouted beds with binary mixtures. The simulated results are consistent with experimental data and can be used to predict regions of particle mixing or segregation in spouted beds.