ANALYSIS OF DISCONTINUITIES ARISING FROM THE ONE-DIMENSIONAL EQUATIONS OF CHANGE FOR FLUIDIZATION

One-dimensional shock waves occurring in fluidized suspensions are characterized by means of jump conditions obtained according to the theory first proposed by Kotchine and recently applied by Astarita and Ocone to hyperbolic PDE descriptions of chemical engineering problems. The theory is applied to the particle bed model for fluidization (Foscolo and Gibilaro) where, under limiting conditions, it yields results compatible with linear stability analysis. More generally, it throws light onto the phenomenon of partial bed collapse, which occurs at the transition from homogeneous to bubbling fluidization, providing explanations both for why collapse is possible and why its extent is limited.