Particle-impact sensor for determining mass flux in a spouted bed

An accelerometer-based sensor was developed to measure the mass flux of particles in the upper spout and fountain of a spouted bed. This sensor employed an impact probe aligned vertically along the axis of the bed, and the probe was precisely positioned with three-axis control into the spout and fountain. The accelerometer was mounted atop the probe and measured impacts from particles moving upwards. The sensor was developed to validate a CFD simulation of the system. In some cases, a sensor such as this, meets the need of obtaining particle fluxes with very little intrusion into the bed and in cases in which optical access is obscured, e.g., inside a furnace during the pyrolysis of acetylene for particle coating. This sensor is limited to the spout region and differs from horizontal, wall-mounted probes that were developed for various purposes. Issues such as signal-processing and measurement requirements as well as efforts to obtain solids velocity profiles within the spout are discussed. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the AIChE Spring Annual Meeting - The 5th World Congress on Particle Technology (Orlando, FL 4/23-27/2006).