Experimental study on vibrating fluidized bed solids drying

Enhancing the gas–solid contacting inside a fluidized bed leads to improved solids drying characteristics. This can be achieved by mechanical vibration, resulting in so-called vibro-fluidized beds. In this study, experiments in a pseudo-2D vibro-fluidized bed setup are performed in order to better understand this improved drying behavior. A coupled particle image velocimetry - infrared thermography technique is applied to characterize the local solids velocity and temperature fields. The added vibration results in a significantly increased solids drying rate compared to a traditional gas-fluidized bed due to enhanced meso-scale particle agitation. Furthermore, it is shown that the gas-bubble appearance and the particle temperature standard deviation are highly dependent on the applied vibration amplitude and frequency.