Heat and mass transfer characteristics in a gas–slurry–solid fluidized bed

The gas–slurry–solid fluidized bed is a unique operation where the upward flow of a liquid–solid suspension contacts with the concurrent up-flow of a gas, supporting a bed of coarser particles in a fluidized state. In the present study we measured the gas holdup, the coarse particle holdup, the cylinder-to-slurry heat transfer coefficient, and the cylinder-to-liquid mass transfer coefficient at controlled slurry concentrations. The slurry particles were sieved glass beads of 0.1 mm average diameter and their volumetric fraction was varied at 0, 0.01, 0.05 or 0.1. The slurry and the gas velocities were varied up to about 12 and 15 cm/s, respectively. The coarse particles fluidized were sieved glass beads of average diameters of 3.6 and 5.2 mm. The individual phase-holdup values were measured and served for use in correlating the heat and mass transfer coefficients. The heat and mass transfer coefficients in the slurry flow, gas–slurry transport bed, slurry–solid fluidized bed and gas–slurry–solid fluidized bed operations can be correlated well by dimensionless equations of a unified formula in terms of the Nusselt (Sherwood) number, the Prandtl (Schmidt) number and the specific power group including the energy dissipation rate per unit mass of slurry, with different numerical constants and exponent values, respectively, to the heat and mass transfer coefficients. The presence of an analogy between the heat and mass transfer from the vertically immersed cylinder in these slurry flow, gas–slurry transport bed and gas–slurry–solid fluidized bed systems is suggested.