(105b) Binary Solid Mixture Separation in a Cold Flow Spouted Bed for Chemical Looping Applications 

Fluidized beds are used in many industries for their favorable characteristics of good solids mixing, high rates of heat and mass transfer, and large throughputs. One process of interest is Chemical looping combustion (CLC) reactor systems, which are a recent technology for electrical generation. The primary difficulty in the development of this technology is the removal of ash and unburnt carbon (or char) from the oxygen carrier material prior to re-entering the air reactor. In an effort to address this issue, several cold flow experimental efforts are being undertaken at the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) towards the development of effective particle separation techniques. This work focuses on the study of the hydrodynamics and elutriation characteristics of a mixture consisting of fine (<50μm) particles (serving as a char analog) and larger (~200μm to ~800 μm) particles (serving as the carrier analog) in a modified spouted bed stripper. In this modified system, the spouted bed will have an annular gap between the wall and spout cone with sweep gas within this gap to aid in the separation, with the smaller particles being removed via elutriation.