Bidisperse micro fluidized beds: Effect of bed inclination on mixing

Micro fluidized beds are basically suspensions of solid particles by an ascending fluid in a millimeter-scale tube, with applications in chemical and pharmaceutical processes involving powders. Although in many applications beds are polydisperse, previous works considered only monodisperse beds aligned in the vertical direction. However, introducing an inclination with respect to gravity leads to different bed patterns and mixing levels, which can be beneficial for some applications. In this paper, we investigate experimentally the behavior of micro gas–solid beds consisting of bidisperse mixtures under different inclinations. In our experiments, mono- and bidisperse beds are filmed with a high-speed camera, and the images are processed for obtaining measurements at both the bed and grain scales. We show that the degree of segregation is larger for vertical beds, but mixing varies non-monotonically with inclination, with an optimal angle of 30°–50° with respect to gravity. By computing the mean and fluctuation velocities of grains, we reveal that the mixing layer results from the competition between segregation by kinetic sieving and circulation promoted by the fluid flow. We also observe worse fluidization as the angle relative to gravity increases, accounting then for the non-monotonic behavior. Our results bring new insights into mixing and segregation in polydisperse beds, which can be explored for processing powders in industry.