App of LS Fluidised Bed

I NTERNATIONAL J OURNAL OF C HEMICAL
R EACTOR E NGINEERING
Volume 1 2003 Review R1
Applications of Liquid-Solid Fluidization

Norman Epstein

University of British Columbia, helsa@chml.ubc.ca
ISSN 1542-6580
Copyright 2003
c by the authors.
All rights reserved.
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Applications of Liquid-Solid Fluidization
Norman Epstein
Abstract
Liquid fluidization of particulate solids has a history which predates the now
more commonly applied gas fluidization. The broad range of operations to which
liquid fluidization has found applications are summarized in this paper. These in-
clude classification of particles by size and density, a special case being sink-and-
float separation by density; backwashing of granular filters and washing of soils;
crystal growth; leaching and washing; adsorption and ion exchange; electroly-
sis with both inert and electrically conducting fluidized particles; liquid-fluidized
bed heat exchangers and thermal energy storage; and bioreactors. Fluidized-bed
bioreactors, which have received much attention during the past thirty years, are
usually characterized by the catalytic use of enzymes or microbial cells that are
immobilized by attachment, entrapment, encapsulation or self-aggregation. The
most common application of such bioreactors is probably in wastewater treatment
and, as in the case of the other operations mentioned above, liquid fluidization
must in each case be weighed against competing schemes for achieving the same
objective before it is adopted commercially.
KEYWORDS: Fluidization, liquid-solid

Epstein: Applications of Liquid-Solid Fluidization 1
1. INTRODUCTION
Although it is common to cite the great mineral-dressing tome of Agricola (1556) as containing the first
reference to liquid fluidization (Di Felice, 1995), the actual operation illustrated therein is hand-jigging,
which involves sorting of particles (classification by density) by hand-oscillation of a screen supporting the
particles in a liquid medium (usually water). The resemblance of this operation to what we now refer to as
liquid fluidization, the continuous upward or downward flow of liquid relative to a mobile swarm of
particles, is perceptible but small. Liquid fluidization in the latter sense was applied at least as early as the
nineteenth century for both sorting and sizing of particles in the mineral dressing industry (Richards, 1893),
where it was referred to as teetering, a liquid-fluidized bed being designated as a teeter column or as
being in the teeter condition. It was only after the term fluidization was coined to describe mobile
swarms of particles contacted upwardly by gases (circa. 1940) that the same term began to be used for
analogous liquid-solid contacting, and the term teeter bed was replaced by liquid-fluidized bed.
Some applications of liquid-fluidized beds, such as particle classification, are thus well over a
century old, while many, such as fluidized-bed electrolysis and bioreactors are of more recent vintage.
Several have become mainstays of the process industries, though none have achieved the industrial and
commercial prominence of gas fluidization applications exemplified by catalytic cracking or coal
combustion. Nor is there a standard configuration of a liquid-fluidized bed even for any given application.
The qualitative discussion below will therefore be limited to identifying the salient features of some
applications, or broad categories thereof, which have been reported on in literature accessible to this author,
but few specific examples will be cited. The reader seeking more information on a given application should
consult the literature on the given unit operation or process industry involved.
2. PARTICLE CLASIFICATION
Particle classification by size (sizing), density (sorting) or even shape (shaping?) depends on the
segregation characteristics of liquid-fluidized beds described e.g. by Di Felice (1995). For particles of fixed
known density and shape, axial particle size distribution at equilibrium in semi-batch (liquid continuous,
solids batch) fluidization can be estimated from the axial pressure profile, using the perfect classification
model of Al-Dibouni and Garside (1979). For narrowly sized solids of varying density, particle density
measurements from successive bottom-most suspension samples in conjunction with frictional pressure
drops measured before and after the samplings will yield the axial density distribution of the solids, by
appropriate use (Galvin and Pratten, 1999) of the equation for particle volume fraction,
1 = M / p AL (1)
in conjunction with that for frictional pressure drop,
p f = L(1 )( p ) g (2)
The particle stratification in a rising stream of liquid which occurs once equilibrium is achieved
within a semi-batch fluidized bed can be maintained intact for continuous separation of the particles
involved via a discharging underflow and overflow, provided the feed rate is kept sufficiently low. An
annularly compartmentalized unit of some elegance for effecting continuous classification has been
patented by Delachanal (1963). Traditionally, liquid-fluidized or teeter bed classifiers were devoted mainly
to mineral separations, but recently they have extended their domain to other materials. The system
developed by Galvin et al. (1998, 1999) consists of a perforated plate water distributor at the base, a
vertical pipe insert through which the feed suspension plunges downward to be met by the upward flow of
water, a raked underflow withdrawal immediately above the distributor and an overflow launder at the top.
The two components of the bidisperse (Galvin et al., 1998) and the three of the tridisperse (Galvin et al.,
1999) feed solids investigated differed in density and they also differed in size, but in the opposite
direction. In the actual separations, density always dominated over size.
Sorting of particles, particularly of bidisperse mineral mixtures, is more cleanly effected by sink-
and-float separation. This is most simply done by using a liquid non-solvent intermediate in density

2 International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering Vol. 1 [2003], Review R1
between that of the two particle species. With overflow and underflow discharge streams, and a continuous
feed suspension introduced at an intermediate position, the sharpness of separation decreases as the feed
rate, the feed solids concentration and the underflow/overflow ratio are increased (Nasr-El-Din et al., 1988,
1990). In the absence of an acceptable liquid, a homogeneous suspension, viz. a water-fluidized bed of
narrowly cut fine sand (e.g. 325+400 mesh), could serve instead. By adjusting the upward liquid flow
carefully, the required suspension density can be achieved. Coarse coal particles can thus be effectively
separated into a clean fraction of low ash content which floats and denser fractions of higher ash content
which sink (Needham and Lynch, 1945).
3. BACKWASHING
Backwashing of downflow granular filters (or fixed bed ion exchange columns) by water fluidization of the
filter medium or media (or ion exchange resin) is a well entrenched industrial procedure, especially for
municipal-water sand filters, where what is removed in the backwash is primarily the filtered solids. The
voidage at which maximum removal occurs is about 0.65-0.70. However, since the curve of removal vs.
is quite flat near the maximum, more practical bed expansions of 40-50% (rather than 100%, corresponding
to =0.7) will produce almost as much filter cleaning as operating at the optimum (Amitharajah, 1978).
Improved cleaning will normally be effected by an upward air scour before or during the water fluidization,
and this is especially essential to the satisfactory functioning of wastewater filters, which receive heavier,
more variable and stickier suspended-solids loads than potable water filters (Cleasby et al., 1975; Cleasby
and Lorence, 1978). Wastewater is therefore not recommended as the backwash liquid. In the case of
petroleum refinery wastewaters the backwash includes much oil in addition to the suspended solids (Brody
and Lumpkins, 1977; Kempling and Eng, 1977), and the stickiness of other wastewater deposits is also
probably contributed to by non-aqueous, immiscible liquid contaminants. Dual-media generally perform
somewhat better than single-medium filters, and no worse than triple media (Cleasby and Lorence, 1978).
Typically, in a dual-media filter, anthracite coal sits on top of denser silica sand in a coal:silica size ratio
between 2:1 and 4:1 (Cleasby and Sejkora, 1975) or even 6:1 (Brody and Lumpkins, 1977), and in the case
of a triple-media filter a third component of even greater density and smaller size, e.g. garnet sand (Cleasby
and Woods, 1975), lies below the silica sand. A modest amount of interfacial mixing, which occurs
spontaneously during backwashing, is desirable from the standpoint of filtrate purity (Cleasby and Sejkora,
1975). However, because the size ratio of the particles in adjacent layers are opposite in sense to that of the
corresponding density ratio, the layers are candidates for inter-mixing, and even inversion (Di Felice,
1995), if the backwash water velocity is raised appreciably above Umf (Cleasby and Woods, 1975).
Towards the end of the backwash it is therefore important to reduce the velocity slowly so that the particles
have time to resume their normal equilibrium positions in the bed at or slightly above the minimum
fluidization velocity before the backflow is turned off completely.
4. IN SITU FLUDIZED WASHING
In situ fluidized washing of soils is based on the same principle as filter backwashing, but for soil washing
a downward water jet which spreads out and then reverses direction has been proposed (Niven and Khalili,
1998a). Contaminant removal is effected by the selective removal or elutriation of the fine particles with
which metal contaminants tend to be associated, and by the buoyant release of light, non-aqueous,
immiscible liquid droplets trapped by interfacial tension forces. As in the case of granular filter
backwashing, the use of an air scour, i.e. air-water fluidization, greatly increases the cleaning efficiency
(Niven and Khalili, 1998b).
5. CRYSTAL GROWTH IN A FLUDIZED BED
Another long-standing and industrially well-established process involving liquid fluidization is that of
seeded crystal growth in a bed fluidized by a moderately supersaturated (metastable) solution of the solute
to be precipitated. Because stratification by size of the growing crystals accompanies the process, the units
involved are usually called classifying crystallizers, of which the most common is the Krystal (or Oslo or
Jeremiassen) crystallizer (Svanoe, 1940; Bamforth, 1965; Perry et al., 1984). Intensive study of the

operating characteristics and design of such crystallizers has been undertaken by Mullin (1993) and co-
workers (e.g. Mullin and Garside, 1967; Mullin and Nyvlt, 1970; Garside et al., 1972), as well as by many
others (e.g. Bransom, 1960), most recently by Tai et al. (1999). Most studies involve the crystallization of
inorganic salts from aqueous solution, but the fluidized-bed crystallization of acetylsalicylic acid (aspirin)
from absolute alcohol has also been reported (Glasby and Ridgway, 1968). Crystal growth rates in lean
beds (>0.98) have been found to be substantially the same as those in the industrially more common dense
beds (0.8), and in both types of beds, the crystal growth rate is almost always significantly smaller than
the corresponding mass-transfer controlled dissolution rate (Garside et al., 1972; Phillips and Epstein,
1974; Jira-Arune and Laguerie, 1979; Tai et al., 1987), as illustrated in Figure 1.
The difference in these rates is caused by the surface integration step in the crystal growth
process, a step which is in series with the mass transfer step (Tai et al., 1999), the particle-liquid coefficient
of which for a given particle-liquid system has been shown to be independent of liquid velocity or voidage,
and of particle size (Nikov and Karamanev, 1991). The dependence of crystal growth rate on particle size
can therefore be attributed to the surface integration step (Phillips and Epstein, 1974; Tai et al., 1999).
Unlike the mass transfer step, which is always first order with respect to its concentration driving force, the
surface integration step is commonly second order, first order or somewhere in between (Tai, 1997).
Finally, fluidized-bed crystallizers can be operated both in the batch mode and the continuous mode, with
bottom discharge of the enlarged crystal product. With a number of simplifying assumptions, amongst
which are that of perfect classification and no uncontrolled nucleation (operation within the metastable
region), models to describe the behavior of both batch (Shiau et al., 1999) and continuous (Frances et al.,
1994) fluidized-bed crystallizers have been formulated.
6. LEACHING AND WASHING
Leaching, i.e. physical or chemical dissolution of a soluble component embedded in the inert matrix of a
granular solid, and washing for removal of the leaching or other residual solution within the intra-particle
pores and the inter-particle voids of the leached or other granules, can be accomplished quite effectively by
liquid fluidization of the solids with the required solvent. The principal applications, actual or potential, are
for extraction of mineral or metal values from ores, and of vegetable oils from seeds. A thorough discussion
of fluidized bed leaching/washing is provided by Kwauk (1991/92).
In the leacher/washer illustrated in Figure 2, the slurry feed is hydraulically distributed into an
enlarged settling head, where much excess liquor is removed. Solid particles then fall countercurrently
against a rising stream of liquor into the leaching/washing region, in which a reasonably well defined
interface usually separates an upper dilute phase zone from a lower dense-phase zone. The leaching solvent
or washing liquid is sparged in at the bottom of the dense-phase region, below which the solid slurry is
compressed, densified and discharged. Compared to more conventional leaching/washing equipment
(Treybal, 1980), such fluidized leachers/washers are deemed by Kwauk (1991-92) to have the advantages
of complete hydraulic operation with no mechanical parts, continuous (though imperfect) countercurrent
contacting in a single column, low solvent-to-solids ratios, low space requirements and ease of automation.
Other more complicated fluidized leaching/washing setups, some with countercurrent staging, are also
described by Kwauk, as well as by Slater (1969), who included pulsed fluidization in his review of
countercurrent liquid-solids contactors. By fabricating spheres out of homogenous mixtures of sulfur (inert)
and benzoic acid (active), and subjecting the spheres to water-fluidized leaching, Panier et al. (1982) were
able to show that when the initial volumetric fraction, v, of the active (soluble) component varied from
0.28 to 0.86 in their experiments, the initial extraction rate of benzoic acid was only diminished by a factor
of v
0.75
relative to dissolution of pure benzoic acid.

solid slurry feed
weir
settling head
overflow
distributor
leaching/washing
dilute
phase
fluidized
zone
solids downflow
dense leach/wash liquor

phase upflow
sparger
leach/wash
compression zone
liquor in solids downflow
leach/wash liquor
downflow
Underflow discharge
Figure 1. Growth and dissolution rates of 1.0 Figure 2. A fluidized leacher/washer, from
mm nickel sulphate -hexahydrate crystals, Kwauk (1991/92)
composited from Phillips and Epstein (1974).
7. ADSORPTION AND ION EXCHANGE
Adsorption and ion exchange are both operations which are conventionally carried out batch-wise in fixed
packed beds, but can gain certain advantages when performed in the fluidized state. Though physical
adsorption involves only two resistances in series (external mass transfer of solute to particle macro-surface
and internal diffusion within particle pores to micro-surface) while ion exchange involves five (external
mass transfer and internal diffusion of ions inwardly, exchange of ions, internal diffusion and external mass
transfer of exchanged ions outwardly), the two operations commonly employ similar types of equipment
which are subject to similar design procedures (Treybal, 1980). Adsorption from liquids is mainly applied
industrially to decontamination of water, aqueous solutions and petroleum products, while ion exchange is
principally, though not exclusively, used for water purification and metal recovery from hydrometallurgical
leach liquors. Though both operations must usually be coupled with regeneration (elution) of the adsorbent
or ion exchange resin, and often with washing as well, it is the original loading (adsorption, exhaustion)
process that is most subject to improvement by liquid fluidization and that has received most attention
industrially and academically in this respect. Even where the solids are still contacted as a batch,
fluidization has the very important advantage over a fixed bed in being able to treat a solution with
suspended fines (as in many hydrometallurgical operations) without prior filtration or clarification, since
the suspended material can pass right through the bed. Similarly, any precipitate formation, gas release and
particle (e.g. resin) expansion during the loading process are easily accommodated, and any heat release
more easily controlled. In addition, since the voidage is greater for the fluidized bed, the same superficial
velocity (upflow in fluidization, downflow in fixed bed) for a given batch of solids will result in a lower
pressure drop (Himsley and Farkas, 1977). The advantage of continuous operation can be achieved by

adopting a setup similar to that of Figure 2, the greater the height to diameter of which the closer the
approach to countercurrent contracting, i.e. to counteracting the moderate deviation from plug flow of the
liquid ( large number of mixing cells) and the greater deviation from plug flow of the solids ( smaller
number of mixing cells) (Slater and Lucas, 1976; Koloini and Zumer, 1979). If the loaded adsorbent or ion
exchange particles are denser than the unloaded ones, as in the case of copper being exchanged with
hydrogen ions (Selke and Bliss, 1951), the loaded particles move to the bottom of the bed, thus enhancing
the counter-currency of the operation. Further enhancement in that direction is provided by staging, which
can have the desirable result of reducing the required solids inventory appreciably (Slater, 1982). Detailed
reviews of the various staging methods proposed and of those adopted industrially, especially for uranium
recovery from its leach liquor, have been published by Slater (1969), Streat (1980) and Slater (1981). The
simplest and most recently revived proposal for a multistage fluidized bed adsorber is a sieve-plate column
without downcomers or pulsation or controlled cycling, in which the liquid flows continuously upward
through the sieve apertures, and fluidized solids on each plate rain continuously downward to the plate
below through the same apertures, the linear dimension of which is three to five times that of the fluidized
particle diameter (Grnewald and Schmidt-Traub, 1999). The authors report that stable operation requires,
amongst other conditions, that the lowest plate have a smaller free hole area than the others.
8. FLOCCULATION
Flocculation in order to achieve clarification of turbid liquids is a process similar to adsorption that can be
effected by the liquid fluidization of some seeded flocs, which then enhance subsequent flocculation of the
suspended colloidal particles that cause the turbidity (Svarovsky, 1990). One continuous process of this
kind involves liquid-fluidized microsand coated (activated) with an alginate flocculant which serves to
flocculate and retain aluminum or ferric salts from incoming suspensions, and is then externally washed to
remove the floc from the sand, and recycled (Sibony, 1981).
9. ELECTROLYSIS
Electrolysis in a fluidized bed both with inert and with electrically conductive particles (extended
electrodes) had amongst its earliest proponents the team of Le Goff et al. (1969).
Electrolytic recovery of metals from dilute streams with consequent purification of these streams can
be much enhanced and rendered economical by inert particle fluidized bed electrolysis. Inert glass beads,
typically 0.6 mm in diameter, are continuously fluidized in the electrolytic cell by the dilute solution, and
the overflow stream recirculated by a pump through the liquid distributor at the bottom of the cell. Planar
metallic mesh electrodes, anodes interdispersed with cathodes, are vertically immersed within the full depth
of the fluidized bed with mesh apertures much greater than the bead size, so that the fluidized beads can
move freely through and around the electrodes. Since for electrolysis of dilute aqueous solutions (< 5 kg
metallic ions/m3) ion transport becomes mass transfer controlled, and since the mass transfer enhancement
factor between the immersed electrodes and the liquid due to the presence of the fluidized beads can be as
much as seven (Lee et al., 1997), ion transport is augmented accordingly. To achieve maximum mass
transfer enhancement, the operation is carried out at bed expansions beyond mf of 50-100%, i.e. at 0.6-
0.7. In the rectangular Chemelec Cell, using a 6% Sb/Pb mesh anode and either Cu or Ti mesh cathodes,
with cell voltages at 2-2.5 volts, current densities of 50-100 A/m2 and current efficiencies of 70-80%, dilute
solutions of copper sulphate and sulphuric acid (0.2-0.8 kg Cu++/m3, 0.1 N H2SO4) were reduced in 100 or
more hours to approximately 0.05 kg Cu++/m3, and the copper was deposited nodule-like into the cathode
apertures. Optimization of the process produced cathodes that were directly usable as anodes for
conventional electrolysis (Lopez-Cacicedo, 1981). Subsequently, the same cells with different electrode
materials were employed to sequentially remove copper and cadmium from dilute hydrometallurgical leach
solutions, and the copper-infused cathodes were again reusable as conventional anodes for the electro-
refining of copper (Boyanov et al., 1988). Both reports recommend connecting several electrolytic cells in
series as a cascade.

10. FLUIDIZED BED ELECTRODES
Fluidized bed electrodes, since the initial reports by Goodridge and co-workers (e.g. Backhurst et al., 1969;
Goodridge et al., 1971), have received much more attention (see Goodridge and Wright, 1983 and Salas-
Morales et al., 1997, for incomplete but useful reference lists) than electrolysis enhancement by inert
particle fluidization. A fluidized bed electrode (FBE) consists of a bed of electrically conducting (metallic
or metal-coated, depending on desired particle density, which influences fluidization velocity) particles
fluidized by electrolyte flow, to which DC current is fed by one or more connecting rods or plates known as
current feeders, and which are often separated from one or more immersed counter-electrodes by a
diaphragm of porous or ionically conductive material that is desirably long-lasting. Provided the bed
expansion from the static condition is small, e.g. 5-25%, some electrical contact is maintained between the
particles and the current feeder and between the particles themselves, so that the surfaces of the particles
then act as a large extension of the feeder surface, thereby greatly increasing the current density based on
the counter-electrode surface area. Though the many trials and proposed applications of FBEs include their
use for fuel cells, organic and inorganic synthesis, industrial wastewater treatment and electrowinning (or
electrodeposition) of metals, the qualified successes of this technology have been mainly in the area of
electrowinning, especially from dilute solutions, with the concomitant reduction of metallic components in
the solutions involved.
Figure 3 is a schematic view of a continuous fluidized bed electrowinning cell, in the cathode
compartment of which metal particles are fluidized by the process stream or wastewater to be treated.
Dimensions and configurations of actual cells differ greatly, while the metals which have been subjected to
FBE deposition are also various. The freshly added metal particles are typically about 0.5 mm in diameter
and grow to a diameter of about 1 mm. The specific cathode area (m2/m3) of a FBE is some 200 times that
of a conventional planar electrode, the current intensity and mass transfer rate about five times greater, and
the metal concentrations that can be treated (at acceptable current efficiencies) four orders of magnitude
smaller (Van der Heiden et al., 1978).
Anode + - Cathode
(current feeder)
Anolyte Catholyte
Supply of
small metal
particles
Fluidised bed
Discharge of
grown metal
particles
Anolyte Catholyte
Figure 3. Schematic of a fluidized bed electrowinning cell, from Van der Heiden et al. (1978)
In fact, as Salas-Morales et al. (1997) have reaffirmed, the intermittency of contact of the FBE
particles with each other and with the current feeder render them periodically subject to chemical attack by
a strongly acid electrolyte, even when the bed expansion is small, so that the FBE has been in the main

unsatisfactory for electrowinning from concentrated electrolytes. The intermittency would cease in the case
of a stationary packed bed, but the electrodeposited metal would then form bridges between particles and
prevent their continuous or even intermittent removal from the cell as product. These investigators have
reviewed the prior literature on, and have therefore recommendedas a device which performs between
the extremes of a fixed bed electrode and a FBEa spouted bed electrode, in which the 98% of the
particles that at any moment reside within the annulus as a moving packed bed are in good electrical
contact with each other and with the current feeder. A similar recommendation has been made by
Hadismajlovi et al. (1996). Salas-Morales et al. (1997) tested both a cylindrical and a flat spouted bed,
with a draft tube surrounding the spout in both cases, for electrowinning of zinc, and found the flat bed to
be superior. The thin internally circulating (upward fluidized/downward loose-packed) slot-spouted bed
electrode proposed by Dweik et al. (1996) has similar characteristics.
11. LIQUID-FLUIDIZED BED HEAT EXCHANGERS
Liquid-fluidized bed heat exchangers (FBHX), in addition to enhancing the clean wall-to-liquid heat
transfer coefficient (Richardson et al., 1976), have the additional important attribute of vigorously
combatting scaling and other types of fouling of the heat transfer surface without the use of chemical
additives. They do so by virtue of the fact that the bed particles incessantly scour the surface, act as
alternative deposition sites for whatever precipitation does occur, and scour each other thoroughly so that,
for example, all the precipitated calcium sulfate from saline water leaves with the exit liquor and can be
filtered out (Hatch et al., 1966; Meijer et al., 1980). Although tests have been performed with the liquid
fluidized bed on the unbaffled shell side of a shell-and-tube heat exchanger, both with the tubes horizontal
and the tubes vertical (Cole and Allen, 1978), preference has in most practical cases been given to locating
the fluidized bed inside the tubes, which must therefore be vertically oriented with a single upward pass
(Klaren and Bailie, 1988), and with proper care taken to design for even distribution of both the liquid and
the fluidized bed particles amongst the tubes (Rautenbach and Kollbach, 1986). The main required
modifications to a conventional shell-and-tube exchanger are a larger inlet chamber with a distribution
system and a larger outlet chamber to act as freeboard for separation of the liquid from the top of the
fluidized bed, and these can sometimes be retrofitted to a conventional exchanger (Kollbach et al., 1987;
Klaren and Sullivan, 1999). The particles can be kept in a stationary fluidized condition or they can be
circulated by means of an internal downcomer (Klaren and Bailie, 1988) or externally (Klaren and Sullivan,
1999). The development of a multi-stage flash/fluidized bed exchanger (MSF/FBE), in which the fluidized
brine feed acts to condense the stagewise flashed steam, resulted in lower heat consumption, greater
flexibility with respect to brine loads and temperatures, and reduction in flash chamber volume by a factor
of six relative to a conventional MSF exchanger (Veenman, 1976, 1977).
In general, as summarized by Kollbach et al. (1987) and others, FBHX units will usually maintain
either totally clean surfaces or reduce fouling sufficiently that operation can be continued without cleaning
(Mller-Steinhagen et al., 1994); wall-to-bed heat transfer coefficients are enhanced by factors of 2-7 at
superficial velocities below 0.5 m/s, maximum enhancement commonly occurring at 0.7 (Klaren and
Halberg, 1980; Rautenbach and Kollbach, 1986); because of the low superficial velocities permissible, the
pressure drop is comparable with that of conventional heat exchangers operating at higher velocities; the
feed flow can be varied between 50 and 150% or more of the design feed flow; erosion of both tubes and
fluidized bed particles is negligibly small; and the fluidized bed particles can consist or be made of all sorts
of chemically and mechanically resistant materials, such as sand, glass, ceramics (e.g. Al2O3) and metals
(e.g. stainless steel). Particles are typically 2-4 mm in diameter, spherical if glass or ceramic, and
cylindrical wire cuttings with length=diameter if metallic (e.g. Kollbach et al., 1987; Mller-Steinhagen et
al., 1994), with tubes approximately 3 cm in inside diameter. Kim and Lee (1997) show the critical effect
of liquid velocity on the particle impacts on the tube walls, with the impact frequency eventually decreasing
as velocity increases. FBHX technology has made inroads into seawater desalination, geothermal energy
utilization, wastewater evaporation, pulp and paper production, and it has been proposed for lube oil
dewaxing (Kollbach et al., 1987; Klaren and Bailie, 1989; Klaren and Sullivan, 1999).

12. THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE
Thermal energy storage by encapsulating phase change material into hollow spheres to be thermally cycled
by water fluidization has been demonstrated experimentally (Sozen et al., 1988). Specifically, 96%
Glaubers salt (Na2SO410H2O), which undergoes an endothermic phase change to anhydrous Na2SO4 (plus
H2O) at 32.4C, and can be reversibly regenerated exothermically at the same temperature, was injected
along with 4% borax (a nucleation catalyst) into thousands of 25-mm o.d. hollow polypropylene spheres.
These spheres were then cyclically fluidized at U/Umf=1.2-2.6 in a 0.34-m i.d. column by hot (inlet
temperature 39C) and cold (inlet temperature 15C) water, each for intervals exceeding one hour. Good
heat transfer resulted because of the large capsule-water surface area engaged, but more importantly, an
unchanging heat storage efficiency of about 60% was obtained, even after 96 cycles. This result, which
contrasts with a heat storage efficiency of less than 38% for the same capsules as a fixed bed, can be
attributed to the constant motion and agitation of the fluidized capsules, which during cooling impedes
segregation of the initially formed Glaubers salt crystals from the denser anhydrous Na2SO4 crystals, and
the consequent blockage of water diffusion required to rehydrate the remaining anhydrous Na2SO4, that
occurs under static conditions. Although heat recovery efficiencies up to 83% for stoichiometric Glaubers
salt were subsequently obtained using the same capsules in a rotating drum (Sozen et al., 1988), the greater
simplicity, higher heat transfer surface area per unit volume and lower costs associated with fluidization
still continue to endow this technique with some advantages.
13. FLUIDIZED BED BIOREACTORS
Fluidized bed bioreactors have received considerable attention during the past three decades, and the
literature on this subject has mushroomed. Much of the effort in this respect has been devoted to
wastewater treatment, which involves biodegradation of waste chemicals (e.g. organics, ammonia, nitrates),
but there is now also a considerable literature on fluidized bed fermentation, the object of which is
biosynthesis of useful products (e.g. alcohol). A broad collection of papers with useful discussions on
various aspects of fluidized bed biological treatment of potable water and wastewater has been edited by
Cooper and Atkinson (1981), an extensive review of both aerobic wastewater treatment and fermentation in
fluidized beds has been provided by Fan (1989), an excellent update mainly on wastewater treatment by
Wright and Raper (1996), and a significant textbook entry by Grady Jr et al. (1999). Although the emphasis
in the middle two references is on three-phase (gas-liquid-solid) bioreactors, much of the information
provided, e.g. on biomass support particles and cell immobilization techniques, is common to both two-
phase (liquid-solid) and three-phase reactors, and additional information specific to liquid-solid systems is
also provided in both references. Thus, the operating conditions of thirteen fluidized-bed aerobic
bioreactors for wastewater treatment in which the liquid is pre-aerated before entry into the fluidized bed
bioreactor, as opposed to being aerated in the bioreactor itself, are fully detailed in Fans Table 8.1d.
Anaerobic bioreactors, though their fluid feed is a liquid, nevertheless commonly produce in situ a gaseous
product (Parkin and Speece, 1984) so that, like aerobic reactors in which air enters with the liquid feed,
they are actually three-phase systems, but they can be treated as two-phase liquid-fluidized beds when the
gaseous product is hydrodynamically negligible.
What most characterizes fluidized-bed bioreactors is their biocatalytic use of immobilized

enzymes or microbial cells, which are attached to the surface of biologically inert non-porous particles, or
entrapped within the matrices of porous particles or gels, or encapsulated within a semi-permeable barrier
such as a membrane, or self-aggregated flocs (Karel et al., 1985). The first of these four immobilization
methods, referred to as the attached growth technique for microbial cells, and involving growth of a biofilm
(layers of cells and excreted slime) on the surface of each support or carrier particle during the course of the
fluidization, is the one most used in fluidized-bed wastewater treatment. The combination of inert carrier
particle (or biomass support particle) and attached biofilm is usually referred to as a bioparticle. The
carrier particles can be inorganic, e.g. sand, glass, alumina and many others, or organic, e.g. activated
carbon, coal, polyethylene and many others, are often spherical or cylindrical, and are usually though not
always moderately narrow cuts of sizes which for different applications have varied from 0.1 to 6 mm. For
wastewater treatment, the most commonly used biocarriers are sand and activated carbon, the latter of

which can simultaneously act as an adsorbent for organic contaminants (Andrews and Tien, 1981). The
growth of biofilm on the carrier particles changes their size, effective density and surface propertiesand
thereby their fluidization characteristics, such as Umf, U0 and n (see Nomenclature). For spherical carrier
particles, some investigators find that the values of these parameters given by the equations in the literature
for rigid spheres apply reasonably well to the resulting bioparticles, if the total equivolume sphere diameter
and weighted density of the latter at any given time are used in the equations, while others find that
empirical modifications must be made to the accepted equations for their prediction assuming rigid spheres.
Since the biocoated particles may be neither smooth nor rigid, their drag coefficients are then higher than
for smooth rigid spheres, so that Umf and U0 are correspondingly lower, i.e. bed expansion for a given value
of U is higher; and the measured values of n considerably higher (Thomas and Yates, 1985). Empirical
determination of Umf, U0 (or Ue) and n as a function of bioparticle size is recommended in the event that
knowledge of bed expansion characteristics is crucial to the bioreactor design. In the case of bioflocs or of
particle matrices which retain some of their porosity after cell entrapment (Atkinson et al., 1979), it has
been shown theoretically for permeable spheres in the Stokes rgime (Re0<0.2; Neale et al., 1973) and
experimentally both in the Stokes rgime (Matsumoto and Suganuma, 1977) and at higher Reynolds
numbers (Masliyah and Polikar, 1980; Webb et al., 1983) that the drag on such particles is lower than for
impermeable spheres of the same size and bulk density, U0 correspondingly higher and the bed expansion
for a given superficial velocity correspondingly lower.
Effluent
Recirculation Excess Biomass
Separator
Influent
Carrier
Particles
Reactor
O2, Chemicals
(optional) Bioparticle
1
2
1 Carrier Particle
2 Biofilm
Figure 4. Schematic diagram of a fluidized bed reactor, after Grady Jr et al. (1999)
Fluidized bed bioreactors, schematized in Figure 4, come in many configurations, including

conventional upward fluidization with constant cross-section, inverse (e.g. Nikolov and Karamanev, 1987),
tapered (e.g. Scott et al., 1978; Allen et al., 1979), zig-zag (Nakamura et al., 1979), baffled (Parkin and
Speece, 1984), with internal circulation (e.g. via draft tube) and with external circulation (Zhu et al., 2000).
Wright and Raper (1996) list twelve advantages of fluidized bed attached growth bioreactors as compared
to more traditional suspended growth bioreactors in which the micro-organisms are not anchored or
immobilized. Of greater relevance are the advantages which liquid-fluidized beds have over other attached
growth bioreactors (e.g. fixed beds). These include (Allen et. al., 1979; Grady Jr et al., 1999) freedom from
plugging, easy passage of insoluble foreign material or unwanted micro-organisms, lower pressure drop,
superior mass and heat transfer characteristics, better control of biofilm thickness, larger surface areas for

biofilm development and easy circulation or removal of bioparticles for excess biomass separation (Figure
4). Separation of the excess biomass is commonly effected outside the reactor either hydrodynamically or
mechanically (Cooper et al., 1981), or inside the reactor by scouring with air fed exclusively to the draft
tube (Nikolov and Karamamev, 1987; Wright and Raper, 1996). Because the density of most biofilms is
close to that of water, the effective or mean density p of the bioparticles approaches that of the liquid
(i.e. ) as the biofilm grows, so that the decreasing p over-rides the increasing bioparticle
diameter dp in determining that U0 decreases as dp increases, an effect accentuated by the previously
mentioned increased drag coefficient of the attached-growth bioparticles compared to that of their rigid
carrier particles. This means that the overgrowth of biofilms can lead to upward elutriation of bioparticles
from a conventional fluidized bed or downward elutriation from an inverse fluidized bed, a problem that is
sometimes dealt with by the use of a retaining grid at the top of the conventional bed giving rise to semi-
fluidization and clogging (Fan, 1989), but is more adeptly handled by having some type of expanded
freeboard section at the top of the conventionally operated column (Wright and Raper, 1996) or at the
bottom of the inverse bed (Nikolov and Karamanev, 1987). The elutriation problem is much attenuated or
even eliminated by use of a tapered fluidized bed (Scott et al., 1978).
14. CONCLUDING REMARKS
In almost every case, liquid fluidization represents only one of many alternate schemes for achieving a
given objective, and its pros and cons must be weighed against those of its competitors before its possible
adoption. Nevertheless, it has been adopted industrially for a large number of mainly physical operations
and increasingly is being applied imaginatively to biocatalysis.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks are due to the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada for continuing
research support and to Jesus Atias, graduate student of the Department of Chemical and Biochemical
Engineering, University of Western Ontario, for redrafting the figures of this contribution.
NOTATION
A cross-sectional area of column, m2
c concentration of dissolved solute in solution, wt.%
c* saturation concentration of solute in solution, wt.%
dp diameter of sphere having same volume as particle, m
g acceleration of gravity, ms-2
L fluidized bed depth, m
M total mass of particles in fluidized bed, kg
n Richardson-Zaki (1954) expansion index, dimensionless
-pf frictional pressure drop across fluidized bed, Pa
Re0 terminal free-settling particle Reynolds number = dpU0/, dimensionless
U superficial liquid velocity, ms-1
Ue value of U when linear plot of log U vs. log at <0.9 is extrapolated to =1, ms-1
Umf minimum fluidization velocity (superficial), ms-1
U0 terminal free-settling velocity of particles, ms-1
Greek letters
fractional void volume liquid volume fraction, dimensionless
mf fractional void volume at minimum fluidization, dimensionless
kinematic viscosity of liquid, m2s-1
liquid density, kgm-3
p particle density, kgm-3

p mean density of heterogeneous particle, kgm-3

v fraction of particle volume which is soluble, dimensionless
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I NTERNATIONAL J OURNAL OF C HEMICAL

Applications of Liquid-Solid Fluidization

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KEYWORDS: Fluidization, liquid-solid

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4. IN SITU FLUDIZED WASHING

5. CRYSTAL GROWTH IN A FLUDIZED BED

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6. LEACHING AND WASHING

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solid slurry feed

dense leach/wash liquor

7. ADSORPTION AND ION EXCHANGE

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10. FLUIDIZED BED ELECTRODES

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11. LIQUID-FLUIDIZED BED HEAT EXCHANGERS

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12. THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE

13. FLUIDIZED BED BIOREACTORS

What most characterizes fluidized-bed bioreactors is their biocatalytic use of immobilized

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Fluidized bed bioreactors, schematized in Figure 4, come in many configurations, including

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14. CONCLUDING REMARKS

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p mean density of heterogeneous particle, kgm-3

Bamforth AW. Industrial Crystallization. London: Leonard Hill, 49-55 (1965).

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Fan L-S. Gas-Liquid-Solid Fluidization Engineering. Boston: Butterworths, 453-588, 415-420(1989).

Jira-Arune N, Laguerie C. Croissance des cristaux de chlorure de potassium en couche fluidise:

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Mullin JW. Crystallization. 3rd ed. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann (1993).

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Nakamura K, Kumagai H, Yano T. Performance of a zig-zag fluidized bed as an immobilized enzyme

Nasr-El-Din H, Masliyah JH, Nandakumar K. Continuous gravity separation of concentrated bidisperse

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Svarovsky L. Solid-Liquid Separation. 3rd ed. London: Butterworth, 130 (1990).

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