Experimental investigation on hydrodynamic behavior in a spouted bed with longitudinal vortex generators

A spouted bed with longitudinal vortex generator (LVG) of sphere was built to enhance radial movement of particles. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was applied to explore effects of longitudinal vortex flow and physical properties of particles on their radial velocity in a 152-mm-diametered spouted bed. The results show that, Compared with the conventional spouted bed, the existence of longitudinal vortex generator gives rise to a large amount of secondary fine vortex flow in the cross section of spouted bed. The enhancement factors of particles movement η with different particle densities are all greater than 1. The smaller the particle density, the more significant the effect of the longitudinal vortex on the radial velocity of the particles. The single-row LVGs can produce a good radial enhancement effect of particle movement when the particle handling capacity is small (H₀ = 165 mm). With the increase of the height of the static bed (H₀), the enhancement of the radial velocity of particles in the spouted bed by multi-row LVGs (three rows) increases gradually, which indicates that the multi-row LVGs have a better overall effect on the enhancement of particle motion in the spouted bed with more particle handling capacity (H₀ = 195 mm, 225 mm).