International Journal of Applied Engineering Research

Fluidized bed reactors are widely used in the chemical industry and are essential to the production of key commodity and specialty chemicals such as petroleum, polymers, and pigments. Fluidized beds are also going to be widely used in the next generation power plants in aiding conversion of coal to clean gas. However, in spite of their ubiquitous application, understanding of the complex multi-phase flows involved is still very limited. In particular, existing computer simulations are not sufficiently accurate/fast to serve as a primary approach to the design, optimization, and control of industrial-scale fluidized bed reactors. Availability of more sophisticated computer models is expected to result in greatly increased performance and reduced costs associated with fluidized bed implementation and operation. Such improved performance would positively affect chemical/energy industry competitiveness and increase energy efficiency. A model for gas solid fluidized bed catalytic reactors was developed by El-Halwagi and El-Rifai. It considered the fluid-bed to be composed of a number of equivalent stages in series. The height of each stage is equal to the average equivalent bubble diameter of the bed. In the present paper the problem studied by El-Halwagi and El-Rifai (1988) has been modified. Here, it consists of bubble size variation along with height. A numerical solution for the concentration profile along the bed height is obtained. All the parameters in the model are correlated with known or experimentally obtainable quantities. Model predictions are shown to compare reasonably well with published experimental data.