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International Society for Industrial Process Tomography

3rd World Congress on Industrial Process Tomography

Observation of 3-D Structure of Bubbles in a Fluidized Catalyst Bed


Takami Kai1, Masaki Misawa2, Tatsuji Kanda1, Takeshige Takahashi1, Ion Tiseanu3 and Naoki Ichikawa2


1 Department of Applied Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Kagoshima University, Kagoshima 890-0065, Japan, kai@cen.kagoshima-u.ac.jp

2 Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, AIST, Tsukuba 305-8564, Japan

3 Institute of Atomic Physics, Bucharest-Magurele R-76900, Romania


ABSTRACT


A fast-scanning X-ray CT system, designed for measuring dynamic events in multiphase fluids, was used to obtain the transient 2-dimensional cross sectional gas-phase distribution in a fluidized catalyst bed containing fine particles. The captured data were sent to a PC for image reconstruction, and the density distributions across the column cross-section were visualized. Using image-processing techniques, a pseudo 3-dimensional image of the bubbles was obtained. The bubble structure was studied based on the 3-dimensional images and the previously obtained results in a 2-dimensional fluidized bed. It was found that the bubble shape was not spherical, but that the bubbles ascending in a fluidized catalyst bed consisted of some smaller bubbles.


Keywords Fluidization, X-ray tomography, Visualization, Bubble

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