Liquid injection in a fluidised bed:Temperature uniformity

Liquid injection in fluidized beds occurs in well-established industrial processes as fluid coking, spray fluidzed bed granulation and condensed mode gas-phase polymerisation. These processes still suffer performance issues due to their complex nature, where liquid injection adds even more complexity. In this work, the effect of liquid injection on the temperature uniformity in a pseudo-2D fluidized bed was studied using Infra-Red Thermography. The Infra-Red images were also studied to qualify the agglomeration behaviour. Injecting smaller droplets (∼90 μm affects the uniformity of the bed more than injecting larger droplets (∼225 μm. However, the formation of agglomerates increases with increasing droplet size. The injection velocity influences the average temperature of the bed more for the larger droplets. Additionally, increased solids motion was observed to reduce the agglomeration formation in the bed. Lastly, the particle temperature distribution does not reflect the presence of agglomerates and is thus unsuitable to quantify the agglomeration behaviour.