Recent Advances in Fluidized Bed Hydrodynamics and Transport Phenomena

Dear Colleagues,

Fluidized beds find extremely broad industrial applications, including energy production and fuel conversion, refineries and petrochemicals, mineral processing, polymerization, food engineering and pharmaceutical manufacturing, air/water treatments, and recycling. New configurations and cleaner solutions for enhanced performance and sustainability have been continuously introduced over the years, e.g., in the efficient use of clean and renewable energy sources, but the possible utilizations are far from exhausted. The basis of the success of this technology is its effectiveness in fluid–solid contact, enhanced heat/mass transfer, and good solids mixing, that ensures high performance and flexibility of operation. In addition to longstanding challenges for greener technologies and process integration, much remains open to further research and development: Different requirements arise with emerging, increasingly complex, and demanding applications, such as bubbling and circulating beds of ultrafine, cohesive, or irregularly shaped particles, multifunctional units combining two or more fluidized solids or processes, staged or interconnected fluidized beds operation, control of tribocharging, milli- and micro-scale technologies; on the other hand, more advanced experimental methods (e.g., non-invasive particle tracking, tomography, infrared sensors), and sophisticated computational tools (e.g., DEM-CFD and hybrid methods, coarse-graining, AI) offer new opportunities for improved understanding and characterization for unit design, scale-up, and optimization.

This Special Issue focuses on fluidized bed hydrodynamics and transport phenomena and aims to attract top-quality studies addressing recent advances in the fundamental and applied aspects of fluidized beds and fluidized systems. A non-exhaustive list of topics follows:

1. Green energy technologies (CLC, CCSU, hydrogen, biofuels, solar)
2. Solids mixing and separation in gas, liquid, and three phase systems
3. Cohesive powder fluidization: characterization methods, assisted fluidization
4. Complex particle production: synthesis, agglomeration, granulation, coating
5. Particle attrition and fragmentation (jets, cyclones, impacts)
6. Advanced computational techniques (TFM, DEM-CFD, MP-PIC, coarse-graining, AI)
7. Dynamics, scale-up, and optimization
8. Innovative solutions (micro-scale, staged) and applications
9. Ancillary equipment: cyclones, non-mechanical valves

Dr. Alberto Di Renzo
Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Scala
Prof. Dr. Stefan Heinrich
Guest Editors

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