(135c) Fluidized Bed Drying of Supported Catalysts: Effect of Process Parameters
AIChE Annual Meeting
2022
2022 Annual Meeting
Particle Technology Forum
Fluidization: Experimental Investigation and Modeling of Fluidization Processes
Monday, November 14, 2022 - 1:10pm to 1:30pm
Experiments were carried out in a Glatt GPCG-1 fluidized bed dryer. Wetted catalyst supports were used as the experimental material. The rate of drying can be described by the change in moisture content of the bed over time. Experiments were done for different temperatures, gas flowrates and bed loadings. Model equations for predicting the moisture content of the bed were implemented using reference drying curves. We found that the model was generally capable of predicting the moisture content of the bed and the rate of drying for various process conditions. Moreover, for different fluidization conditions, we found that the model was capable of predicting the time to dry to 0% moisture content for cases with a delay in fluidization. We found that the model worked best when the majority of the drying took place in the unhindered drying period where the rate was roughly constant. However even when drying took place in the hindered drying period, the model was still able to make reasonably good predictions. We also found that there was better agreement between the model and experiments for high bed loadings where the number of transfer units was large. This work provides quantitative findings on how process conditions affect the rate of drying for a bed of catalyst supports with corresponding scale up equations.