Particle attrition mechanism with a sonic gas jet injected into a fluidized bed

High velocity gas jets in fluidized beds provide substantial particle attrition: they are used industrially to control the particle size in fluid bed cokers and to grind products such as toner, pharmaceutical or pigment powders. One method to control the size of the particles in the bed is to use an attrition nozzle, which injects high velocity gas and grinds the particles together. An important aspect of particle attrition is the understanding and modeling of the particle breakage mechanisms. The objective of this study is to develop a model to describe particle attrition when a sonic velocity gas jet is injected into a fluidized bed, and to verify the results using experimental data. The model predicts the particle size distribution of ground particles, the particle breakage frequency, and the proportion of original particles in the bed which were not ground. It was found that the particle breakage frequency can be used to predict the attrition results in different bed sizes. A correlation was also developed, which uses the attrition nozzle operating conditions such as gas density and equivalent speed of sound to predict the mass of particles broken per unit time. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.