EXTENSION OF THE PARTICLE SEGREGATION MODEL TO BINARY LIQUID-FLUIDIZED BED

摘要

A previous theoretical investigation of segregation direction problems in gas-fluidized binary mixtures (Particle Segregation Model, PSM) is extended to the case of liquid-fluidized beds composed of smaller, denser particles mixed with bigger, less dense particles.Maintaining the typical assumptions of simplified theoretical treatments (e.g.spherical particles, homogeneous properties throughout the bed), it is shown that essentially the same, simple and parameter-free, result found for gas-fluidized beds can be obtained for liquid-fluidized binary beds.For the specific case under examination, the PSM results prove particularly useful to investigate layer inversion phenomenon characteristics, for which validation against data available in the literature is presented.Reasonable agreement is found for a broad range of conditions.Finally, discussion of different applications of the PSM provides interesting results for further experimental investigations.