(166b) Drag Force Model for Fluidized Bed of Binary Mixture of Particles

Numerical simulations of discrete particles in fluidized beds became popular in the last 10 years. Many of them, however, treat mono-dispersed particle systems. There is no exactly mono-dispersed system in industrial fluidized beds. If the poly-dispersed particles with the same density are fluidized, larger particles settle down to the bottom of the particle bed (Jetsam) and smaller ones segregate in the upper part (Flotsam). Segregation reduces the efficiency of industrial processes. On the other hand, the segregated particles are easily separated and can be recycled. The drag force on each particle in the poly-dispersed system is not well-understood. Thus we attempt to develop a drag force model on each particle in the poly-dispersed fluidized bed. In the present paper, we focus on a binary mixture of particle with different size. An experiment was performed to validate the drag force model. Temporal progress of the segregation was quantitatively evaluated.