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Lookup NU author(s): Emeritus Dr David Reay, Dr Vladimir Zivkovic
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).
Micro-fluidized beds represent a novel means of significantly enhancing mixing, mass and heat transfer under the low Reynolds number flows that dominate in micro- devices used in microfluidics and chemical micro-process technologies. This is one way of implementing process intensification. Major differences of micro-fluidized beds from their classical macro-scale counterparts are the critical importance of surface forces and almost unavoidable wall effects due to their small bed size. Surface forces can become dominant over gravity and hydrodynamics forces at the microscale and fluidization could either be hindered or even prevented through the adhesion of particles to the walls of the bed. We have used the acid-base theory of van Oss, Chaudhury and Good combined with the Derjaguin approximation to estimate the wall adhesion forces for comparison with hydrodynamics forces. Our new experiments show interesting fluidization behaviour at the boundary of micro-flow as a result of interplay between the ratio of surface and hydrodynamics forces and wall effects which both influence the minimum fluidization velocity.
Author(s): do Nascimento OL, Reay DA, Zivkovic V
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Powder Technology
Year: 2016
Volume: 304
Pages: 55–62
Print publication date: 01/12/2016
Online publication date: 10/05/2016
Acceptance date: 09/05/2016
Date deposited: 09/05/2016
ISSN (print): 0032-5910
ISSN (electronic): 1873-328X
Publisher: Elsevier
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.powtec.2016.05.013
DOI: 10.1016/j.powtec.2016.05.013
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