| dc.description.abstract | Since
its
first
development,
fluidized
bed
had
been
used
to
a
wide
range
of
industrial
application
that
involve
chemical
and
mechanical
processes.
Numerous
conventional
fluidized
beds
have
been
developed
including
centrifugal fluidized bed, vibro-fluidized bed,
tapered fluidized bed, spouted fluidized bed, etc. However, there are several shortcomings of
these conventional fluidized beds that become the challenges of efficiency in processing
materials. Further, these shortcomings affect the quality of fluidization in relation to moving
parts, particle mixing, pressure drop, hydrodynamics, and limitation in using variety particle
sizes. Thus, a new technology of fluidized bed was introduced. Swirling Fluidized Bed (SFB)
is a recent technology on fluidized bed developed by researchers that acknowledged as
current best options in the industry as this type of fluidized bed able to provide better quality
of fluidization, such as, no moving parts in the process, uniform motion of particles influence
to excellent particles mixing, reduces elutriation, lower pressure drop, and allows application
of variety particle sizes. SFB has several variants of bed distributor; the most popular one is
SFB with annular distributor. As it develop, it is found that high level of bed pressure drop is
become major drawbacks of the current SFB with annular distributor. Thus, a new variant of
air distributor is introduced, since air distributor in SFB hold a key role in distributing gas
into bed column in which responsible for fluidization of the particles. There has been no
published experimental study on the particle motion or behavior especially particle velocity of
SFB with mesh type distributor. Therefore, an experimental study of the particle motion and
velocity in SFB with mesh-type distributor is needed to fulfill this gap. The experiment was
conducted in a laboratory scaled SFB with Mesh-type Distributor and wire mesh with 2.8mm2
size is used in this experiment for the distributor. Three different sizes of sphere PVC particle
(6mm, 4mm, and 3mm) were selected for the investigation of the effect of particle size. Four
different density of sphere PVC particle (1.77 g/cm3, 2.99 g/cm3, 2.21 g/cm3 and 2.65 g/cm3)
were selected for the investigation of the effect of particle density. Superficial velocity of the
air entering the bed was adjusted within the range of producing stable swirling regime of
operation and the bed weight varied from 500 g to 1250 g with increment of 250 g, were used.
The results exhibit that SFB with Mesh-type distributor provided advance improvement than
annular distributor in term of efficiency. SFB with Mesh-type distributor needs less
superficial velocity to get the particles fluidized despite the increasing bed weight, thus lower
bed pressure drop is produced for the fluidization process as the output.
Keyword: Fluidization, Swirling Fluidized Bed, air distributor, PIV, particle study. | en_US |
