Effect of the distributor plugging ways on fluidization quality and particle stratification in air dense medium fluidized bed

Gas-solid fluidized bed separation is a highly efficient and clean technique for coal separation, and can effectively remove ash and sulfur contained gangue minerals from coal. However, the fine coal plugging distributor often leads to uneven fluidization and affects the separation effect. In this paper, different plugging ways were designed to study their effects on the fluidization characteristics and particle mixing. It was found that when the plugging phenomenon occurs, the minimum fluidization velocity of the fluidized bed gradually decreases as the plugging area enlarges. The difference between the top and the bottom of the bed minimum fluidization velocity increases accordingly, and a "stagnation phenomenon" occurs in the bed. The standard deviation of pressure fluctuations at the top of the bed is smaller than that at the bottom of the bed, which is the opposite of normal conditions. As the area of the plugging increases, the dead zone on the side wall of the fluidized bed significantly increases. The size of the dead zone is rapid reducing at the initial stage. It was noticed that the stratification of the low-density products is particularly affected by plugging, whereas the stratification of high-density products is not obviously influenced by certain conditions.