Investigation On Electrostatics In Fluidized Bed

Electrostatics is unavoidable in fluidized bed due to the frequent collisions among solid particles, as well as between solid particles and the wall. It can cause serious problems for fluidized bed, altering hydrodynamics, causing agglomeration, interfering with instrumentation, generating nuisance discharges and even creating the danger of explosions. The accumulated electrostatic charges on the solid particles or walls can greatly affect the performance of fluidized bed. Despite these negative effects of electrostatics, current study is far from complete.  Our study will focus on charge accumulation in the solid particles and wall of fluidized bed. The influence of solid particle properties, fluidizing velocities on the electrostatics will be studied through experiments, thus we can have better understanding into the mechanism of electrostatics generation and transport. The influence of electrostatics on the image reconstruction in Electrical Capacitance Tomography will also be addressed. 

*Corresponding author. Tel.: +65 6516 5079; Fax: +65 6779 1936; E-mail address: chewch@nus.edu.sg (C. H. Wang)