Caracterização da fluidização de biomassas de casca de madeiras em leitos polidispersos

Abstract

This paper presents the physical characterization of samples of biomass and inert and the characterization of fluid dynamics of binary mixtures of sand and biomass, by determining the fluidization curves from these mixtures. Eucalyptus bark (Eucalyptus) and pine bark (Pinus elliottii) were used as biomass. The experiments were performed in a bench bed developed at the Unisinos with an internal diameter of 94 cm and 1.2 m in length. The biomass samples have an average particle size of 579.13 μm for pine and 537.50 μm for eucalyptus with specific real mass of 1,271 g/cm³ and 1.386 g/cm³ respectively. The mixtures were prepared with proportions between 1.43% to 41.89% by weight of biomass. The initial (ufi), the apparent (ufa), the complete (ufc), and the minimum fluidization velocity (umf) were determined for fluid dynamic tests. The methods employed were the pressure drop graph as a function of gas velocity and observations. The analyzes have been performed concerning the influence of the nature of the biomass, the mass fraction of biomass contained in the mixture and comparison of the experimental results regarding the correlation proposed in the literature. The results showed that with the increase of the proportion of biomass characteristics speeds tend to increase, with the exception of the sand 01 with pine mixtures. The correlation proposed by the authors Paudel and Feng (2013) presented a good estimate for the prediction of the minimum fluidization velocity of mixtures of biomass and inert with absolute average relative errors of 12.70%, 31.90%, 140.33% and 19.10% for mixtures of sand 01 with eucalyptus, sand 02 with eucalyptus, sand 01 with pine and sand 02 with pine respectively.