Abstract
The present study proposes a cost-effective assisted fluidization technique of particle mixing to improve the carbon capture effectiveness of a fluidized bed containing fine adsorbent powder. Using activated carbon as the adsorbent, we mixed external particle of Geldart group B classification in different fractions to examine the effectiveness of the proposed strategy of particle mixing. Four different particle-mixing cases were considered by varying the amount of added particle-0, 5, 10, and 30 wt %-on external particle-free basis. The inlet flow of the nitrogen was fixed, while two different flows of carbon dioxide were used. The adsorption experiment consisted of a three step procedure comprising purging using pure nitrogen, followed by adsorption with fixed inlet CO2 concentration, and finally the desorption step. Inlet flows of both nitrogen and CO2 were separately controlled using electronic mass flow controllers with the help of data acquisition system (DAQ). The CO2 breakthrough was carefully monitored using the CO2/O-2 analyzer, whose analog output was recorded using the DAQ. Best results were obtained with 10% external particles. This is in conformity with the results of our previous study of bed hydrodynamics, which pointed to clear improvement in the fluidization behavior with particle mixing.