145
Tecnología y Ciencias del Agua
, vol. VIII, núm. 3, mayo-junio de 2017, pp. 143-150
Campos-Díaz & Alvarez-Cruz,
A proposal of a hydrodynamic model to low Reynolds numbers in a liquid-solid inverse fluidized bed reactor
ISSN 2007-2422
•
kg/m
3
were used as solid phase. The sphericity
is an important measure that describes how
round a particle is defined as the ratio of the
surface area of a sphere with the same volume
as the given particle to the surface area of the
particle itself, therefore the solid particles in this
work have a sphericity of 1.
Installation
A schematic diagram of the fluidized bed reac-
tor used in this work is shown in Figure 1. As
shown, the experimental setup included a 0.04
m of internal diameter (ID) and 0.50 m high
cylindrical glass column. The work fluid was
stored in a tank, and pumped into the column
by a 1/8 HP little giant centrifugal pump, model
583002. The flow rate in the reactor was mea-
sured with a rotameter and fixed in the range
between 0.95-9.5 (l min
-1
).
Start-up
The inverse fluidization with each particles lot
was done of the following way: The inverse
fluidized bed reactor was filled with water at
20
o
C, the water was used as a liquid phase, the
polypropylene particles were introduced for the
upper part of the reactor and the initial height
bed was measured with the calibrated scale in
centimeter. The flow rate was increased 6 times
more (0.63, 0.88, 1.00, 1.13, 1.26 and 1.38 l min
-1
)
and the heights bed was measured. Figure 2
shows the inverse fluidization reactor at differ-
ent flowrates.
Particle density
Particle density was determined by Standard
test methods for specific gravity of solids by wa-
ter pycnometer (ASTM D854-14) to determining
their volume and mass, this method was repeat
three times The volume was measured using a
pycnometer filled with light oil (density 750 kg/
m
3
) and the mass was measured in an analytical
balance Sartorius ±1x10
-7
kg. The particle den-
sity was calculated by dividing the mass by the
volume.
The density media was determined by pyc-
nometer (ASTM D854-14). The viscosity media
was measured with a Malvern SV-10 vibratory
viscosimeter.
Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the inverse fluidized bed reactor.
