Figure 8 . The mean and standard deviation of the expanded bed
height with varying fluidization gas velocity.
3.2. Effect of wood pellets on the fluidization
behavior
In this section, fluidization with the addition of 100 wood pellets in
the bed relative to case 1 was investigated and compared to the
baseline. Note, the static bed height provided in Table 2 corresponds to
the LDPE particle bed height for all cases. With the addition of 100
wood pellets, the actual bed is around 2.5 cm higher than the LDPE only
case, yet is referred to using the LDPE bed height. Figure 9 shows the
snapshots of the binary fluidization of wood and LDPE particles with
superficial gas velocity ranging from 1.5 – 3.7 Umf. At
1.5 Umf (Figure 9a), the particle mixture remain
segregated, with wood particles sitting at the bottom of the bed due to
its larger density. At 2.0Umf (Figure 9b), particle
mixture begins to mix, even though at higher elevations only LDPE
particles are observed. Different from the LDPE only case that forms
spouts with the further increase of superficial gas velocity to 3.0
Umf, at 3.0 Umf and 3.7
Umf, the bed stays in the slugging region with wood
particles well mixed with the LDPE particles.