Exit effect on hydrodynamics of the internal circulating fluidized bed riser

This is the first time an extensive investigation has been carried out regarding the effects of riser exit geometry on pressure drop and solid behaviour inside the Internal Circulating Fluidized Bed (ICFB) riser, using different riser exit geometries at several operating conditions.The Radioactive Particle-Tracking (RPT) technique was used for solid concentration measurements and solid residence time distribution at the exit zone. Experiments were conducted using Geldart B particles, in the gas superficial velocity range of 4 to 10 m/s. Axial solid hold-up, solid residence time distribution in the exit zone, and the reflux ratio factor k_m, (defined earlier by [E.H. Van der Meer, R.B. Thorpe, J.F. Davidson, Flow patterns in the square cross-section riser of a circulating fluidized bed and the effect of riser exit design, Chem. Eng. Sc. 55 (19) (2000) 4079-4099]), were the main criteria used to investigate the impact of gas-solid separator devices implemented at the ICFB riser exit.Solid residence time distribution results and axial solid hold-up profiles provided clear evidence that the separator device at the riser exit strongly influences the hydrodynamic structure of the ICFB riser. The V-shaped riser exit geometry was found to be the optimum of all the configurations studied.     

Feedback linearizing control of a fluidized bed reactor

The design of an adaptive nonlinear controller for the control of a fluidized bed reactor is derived by using exact linearization techniques. Reset action and parameter adaptation are used to make more robust the precise compensation of nonlinear terms, which is called for in the linearization technique. A nonlinear antiwindup mechanism is introduced to handle reset windup problem and to provide fast response without large overshoot. Simulation results show that the proposed adaptive controller guarantees good setpoint tracking. The developed estimation algorithm allows accurate estimation of the parameters for which the regressor component is not zero.     

Decreasing the Sampling Time Interval in Radioactive Particle Tracking

The study of the movement of solids in multiphase reactors using radioactive particle tracking is currently limited to fairly modest particle velocities because of count‐rate limitations of the detection system. In this work, this restriction was overcome by increasing the activity of the radioactive tracer, by decreasing the sampling time interval and by modifying the particle tracking software to recognize which detectors were saturated and to use only the data from the remaining unsaturated detectors. Higher tracer activity resulted in lower standard deviation of the calculated tracer coordinates.     

A Survey of Engineering Education Outside the United States: Implications for the Ideal Engineering Program

Undergraduate engineering programs in fourteen countries are surveyed to determine the status of engineering education outside the United States and to analyze the implications for the ideal engineering program of the future here in the United States. The items surveyed include the number of years required to obtain an engineering degree, title of the engineering degree, high school preparation for engineering programs, cost of education, completion rates for engineering degrees, entrance requirements, mathematical requirements, and support for laboratory work. The most notable aspects of engineering education outside the United States are:

• ? Stronger high school preparation and requirements in mathematics and science
• ? Longer period of time required for an engineering degree
• ? Advanced level of mathematics required in engineering programs
• ? Low cost of education

It appears that in most countries engineering education is more intense and rigorous than in the United States. In formulating the ideal engineering program of the future we must be sensitive to competing programs in the rest of the world.     

Real-time wrist localization in color images based on corner analysis

Hand detection and gestures recognition have become very popular in recent human-computer interaction systems. Although several methods of hand detection have been proposed in the literature, they exist few methods that use the wrist as a factor of detection, others impose constraints on the length of the sleeves and on the orientation of the hand. In this work, we present a new two-stage algorithm of wrist localization designed for hand detection and gestures recognition systems. The first stage of the algorithm consists in separating the skin region containing the hand from the background, and in the second stage, the wrist is localized from the resulted skin mask. The main contribution of the proposed method is based on the analysis of corners along the contour of the skin masks to localize the wrist emplacement. Based on an evaluation on 437 color images with their ground-truth and three sets of skin masks, we compared our method with other efficient methods of literature and the results obtained were very satisfactory.     

Non-chattering quantized control for synchronization in finite–fixed time of delayed Cohen–Grossberg-type fuzzy neural networks with discontinuous activation

Neural Computing and Applications - This paper investigates the controller design problem of synchronization in finite- $$\setminus $$ fixed-time of a class Cohen–Grossberg-type fuzzy neural...     

Development of a fluidized bed thermogravimetric analyzer

A new fluidized bed thermogravimetric analyzer (FB‐TGA) was developed that introduces two major particularities: the pseudo variation of the weight of the reactor and the special strategy for gas flow rate adjustment according to temperature. A momentum balance was performed on the reactor and the pseudo variation of the reactor weight was evaluated by measuring the pressure drop through the gas distributor and filter. The real weight loss of the reactor was obtained by subtracting the pseudo variation of the weight from the total weight loss measured by the load cell. In addition, a special program for the gas flow rate as a function of temperature was developed and used; so the minimum fluidization regime is maintained throughout all of the experiments. The validation test of the FB‐TGA was carried out on calcium hydroxide decomposition, and the results were compared with those obtained from the conventional TGA. Diffusion control was suppressed by the application of the FB‐TGA, which was confirmed by the x‐ray diffraction analysis on the treated samples. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 61: 84–89, 2015     

Distribution of large biomass particles in a sand‐biomass fluidized bed: Experiments and modeling

The axial distribution of large biomass particles in bubbling fluidized beds comprised of sand and biomass is investigated in this study. The global and local pressure drop profiles are analyzed in mixtures fluidized at superficial gas velocities ranging from 0.2 to 1 m/s. In addition, the radioactive particle tracking technique is used to track the trajectory of a tracer mimicking the behavior of biomass particles in systems consisting of 2, 8, and 16% of biomass mass ratio. The effects of superficial gas velocity and the mixture composition on the mixing/segregation of the bed components are explored by analyzing the circulatory motion of the active tracer. Contrary to low fluidization velocity (U = 0.36 m/s), biomass circulation and distribution are enhanced at U = 0.64 m/s with increasing the load of biomass particles. The axial profile of volume fraction of biomass along the bed is modeled on the basis of the experimental findings. © 2014 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 60: 869–880, 2014     

Experimental investigation of solid particles flow in a conical spouted bed using radioactive particle tracking

Solid particles flow in a conical spouted bed is characterized by radioactive particle tracking. The influence of operating conditions on key parameters of this flow is evaluated and discussed: the morphology of the solid bed is not strongly influenced by the forces exerted by the gas on the solid particles, but rather by geometrical considerations; the particles spend approximately 8% of their time in the spout in all experiments; it is the force exerted on the solid particles by the gas that directly controls the volumetric flow rate between adjacent regions, and not the amount of particles in the bed; as U/U_ms increases, the volume of solid particles in the annulus decreases, the volume of solid particles in the fountain increases and the volume of solid particles in the spout remains constant. Correlations to predict key flow parameters as functions of operating conditions are also established and discussed. © 2015 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 62: 26–37, 2016     

Characterization of solids mixing patterns in bubbling fluidized beds

Behavior of the solid phase in fluidized beds was studied by a 2D CFD-DEM approach to obtain more information on the solid mixing and circulation. Hydrodynamic parameters, including solid diffusivity, and internal and gross circulations were considered in this study. To validate the simulation, time-position data obtained by the Radioactive Particle Tracking (RPT) technique were used. It was shown that the 2D model can satisfactorily predict the axial diffusivity, while the radial diffusivity calculated based on the model is an order of magnitude smaller than the experimental one in 3D. The influence of aspect ratio of the bed, type of distributor, and inlet gas velocity on solids mixing pattern were also studied. The solids flow pattern in the bed changed considerably by increasing the aspect ratio. Different solid circulations were captured by numerical model for the two types of distributors, namely porous and injection types. The results suggested that increasing the superficial gas velocity caused rigorous internal and gross circulations, which in return, improved solids mixing and decreased deviations from well mixed state.