Spouted bed combustion of wood charcoal: performance comparison of three different designs

The combustion efficiency of a conventional spouted bed reactor with a central spout inlet is compared with two alternative reactors having different spout inlet arrangements. For one of the designs, air was introduced into a square duct column through a rectangular slit across the whole cross-section of the column, while in the other the air was introduced into a cylindrical column through a circular slit. Column cross-sectional area and air inlet area for all the reactors were approximately the same. The highest gas–solid contacting and lowest carbon monoxide (CO) emission was achieved in the design with circular slit air inlet while the lowest gas–solid contacting and highest CO emission was observed in the design with rectangular slit air inlet.