Modeling Hydrodynamics of Bubbling Fluidized Bed Reactor for Biomass Gasification

Bubbling fluidized bed models finds wide applications in biomass gasification. Particle size, minimum fluidization velocity and pressure drop are the important parameters to characterize the hydrodynamic behaviour of the particles inside the fluidized bed. This study focuses on the effect of bed height, bed material, reactor size and the superficial velocity in the flow hydrodynamics leading to the optimum design of a bubbling fluidized reactor. The results showed that, increased bed height at higher flow velocity enhanced bubble coalescence creating slugs that flow through the centre of the bed. At higher gas flow rate, the bubbles size and velocity are increased with increase in bed height due to the exchange of mass and energy from the emulsion phase. The results also showed that, increase in bed mass, increased the bed pressure drop while decreasing the distributor pressure drop.