Particle characteristics of a stable fluidized bed aerosol generator

An aerosol generator consisting of a vibrating system for feeding dust into a fluidized bed was developed and tested to determine its dust output characteristics. The dust feed unit can produce 0–40 g min⁻¹ of coal dust and shows constant output up to 3 h operation durations. These correspond to mass concentrations of 0–101 g m⁻³ of coal particles for an air flowrate of 395 l min⁻¹ through the aerosol generator. The aerosolized coal particles show constant particle size distribution with time for up to h of testing under varied operation parameters. The normalized particle size distribution remains almost identical for a given feed material for a range of dust loadings. The time required to reach steady state aerosol generation is negligible for the sizes of coal particles used in this investigation.