A fluidized bed is a physical phenomenon that occurs when a solid particulate substance (usually present in a holding vessel) is under the right conditions so that it behaves like a fluid. The usual way to achieve a fluidized bed is to pump pressurized fluid into the particles. The resulting medium then has many properties and characteristics of normal fluids, such as the ability to free-flow under gravity, or to be pumped using fluid technologies.
The resulting phenomenon is called fluidization. Fluidized beds are used for several purposes, such as fluidized bed reactors (types of chemical reactors), solids separation, fluid catalytic cracking, fluidized bed combustion, heat or mass transfer or interface modification, such as applying a coating onto solid items. This technique is also becoming more common in aquaculture for the production of shellfish in integrated multi-trophic aquaculture systems.
A fluidized bed consists of fluid-solid mixture that exhibits fluid-like properties. As such, the upper surface of the bed is relatively horizontal, which is analogous to hydrostatic behavior. The bed can be considered to be a heterogeneous mixture of fluid and solid that can be represented by a single bulk density.
Furthermore, an object with a higher density than the bed will sink, whereas an object with a lower density than the bed will float, thus the bed can be considered to exhibit the fluid behavior expected of Archimedes' principle. As the "density", (actually the solid volume fraction of the suspension), of the bed can be altered by changing the fluid fraction, objects with different densities comparative to the bed can, by altering either the fluid or solid fraction, be caused to sink or float.
In fluidised beds, the contact of the solid particles with the fluidisation medium (a gas or a liquid) is greatly enhanced when compared to packed beds. This behavior in fluidised combustion beds enables good thermal transport inside the system and good heat transfer between the bed and its container.
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.
A chemical reactor is an enclosed volume in which a chemical reaction takes place. In chemical engineering, it is generally understood to be a process vessel used to carry out a chemical reaction, which is one of the classic unit operations in chemical process analysis. The design of a chemical reactor deals with multiple aspects of chemical engineering. Chemical engineers design reactors to maximize net present value for the given reaction.
This course aims at studying thermal power cycles, heat pumping technologies, and equipment.
This course applies concepts from chemical kinetics and mass and energy balances to address chemical reaction engineering problems, with a focus on industrial applications. Students develop the abilit
Explores isothermal reactor design, including stoichiometry, rate laws, and MATLAB simulations, highlighting the tradeoff between reactivity and pressure drop.
Methanation can be applied as part of a Power-to-Gas (PtG) concept to store renewable electricity. Using a catalytic bubbling fluidized bed (BFB) methanation reactor allows a flexible and economic operation. Properties of bubbles rising through the fluidiz ...
Supercritical (SC) fluid technologies are well-established methods in modern green chemical synthesis. Using SC fluids as solvents instead of traditional liquids gives benefits of higher diffusivity and lower viscosity, which allows mass transfer intensifi ...
Lignin has emerged as an attractive alternative in the search for more eco-friendly and less costly materials for enzyme immobilization. In this work, the terephthalic aldehyde-stabilization of lignin is carried out during its extraction to develop a serie ...