Influence of wall roughness on the hydrodynamics in a circulating fluidized bed

Many efforts have been made to explore the particle and gas behavior in circulating fluidized beds during the last decade. Glicksman el al. (1991) reported that protrusions as small as one particle diameter may cause a change in the voidage of a circulating fluidized bed. Since the walls of CFB combustors and other commercial CFB reactors can be quite rough, with roughness elements sometimes several times the mean particle diameter, the roughness could have a significant influence on the hydrodynamics, affecting mixing, gas-solid contacting, and heat and mass transfer in circulating fluidized-bed processes. It is therefore important to explore the influence of wall roughness on riser hydrodynamics. No other previous work has been reported on this topic. Here, the influence of wall roughness on CFB hydrodynamics is identified by comparing the experimental results from a riser with rough walls with those from the same riser having smooth surfaces.