LONGITUDINAL PRESSURE DISTRIBUTION IN THE ANNULUS OF A SPOUTED BED

In the previous paper, we reported that Ergun's equation, -dp/dz = K1 U(a) + K2 U(a)2, was adopted to extend the force balance model of Mamuro et al., following Epstein and Levine. We predicted the longitudinal distribution of fluid velocity and pressure in the annulus, and the maximum ratio of spouting to fluidizing pressure drop. In this paper we report the experimental results obtained for the longitudinal pressure distribution in the annulus. Longitudinal pressure distributions were measured for the spouted beds of different column diameters and of spherical glass particles and Soma sand of various sizes, wheat and polystyrene pellets. Experimental results were in good agreement with predicted values.