8. Conclusion

Fluidized beds offer high transfer performance. As well as being excellent gas-solid contactors, they can improve exchanges between a wall and a gas, notably through particle convection processes in the vicinity of the exchange surfaces.

These advantages mean that fluidized beds, in both bubbling and circulating regimes, have found numerous industrial applications involving coupled mass and heat transfer, from the drying of divided solids to the calcination of ores and the cracking of hydrocarbons. Combustion applications in fluidized-bed boilers for power generation are also booming. Coal, biomass and waste gasification processes also benefit from the excellent transfer performance of fluidized-bed gas-solid contactors.