Publication: Hydrodynamic study of sand particles in anaerobic digestion
Date
2002-03-01
Authors
Tan, Swee Ki
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Abstract
The anaerobic digestion process is extremely complex. Its many simultaneous
complex biological reactions, each with differing kinetics, have proved difficult to learn
and even more challenging to apply. This is why advances have been slow to materialize.
Furthermore, there is still limited number of experiments being carried by the
researchers especially on the anaerobic digestion in the liquid-solid fluidized bed. As a
result, this project is done to work directly towards obtaining the hydrodynamic
characteristics of sand particles in an anaerobic liquid-solid fluidized bed.
The sand particle, which is the main fluidizing medium, was the only material
studied in this project. The sand particle sizes range from 0.4829 mm to 3.596 mm after
consider the practical industrial usage of anaerobic digester.
In this project, systematic experimental study was conducted in order to
investigate the effects various particle sizes on the important hydrodynamic
characteristics of liquid-solid fluidized beds, such as minimum fluidization velocity and
the corresponding pressure drop. In this case, sand bed pressure drop was measured as a
function of superficial water velocity in order to determine the minimum fluidization
velocity.
A few correlations have also been used to calculate the value of minimum
fluidization velocity and the corresponding pressure drop. These values are then
compared with the values obtained from experiment.