Flow behavior and mixing characteristics of rice husk/silica sand/rice husk ash

We investigate fluidization characteristics of the mixture of rice husk, silica sand and rice husk ash as a preliminary study for valuable utilization of rice husk ash obtained from gasification of rice husk in a fluidized bed reactor. As experiment valuables, the blending ratio of rice husk and sand (rice husk: sand) is selected as 5:95, 10:90, 20:80 and 30:70 on a volume base. Rice husk ash was added with 6 vol% of rice husk for each experiment and air velocity to the reactor was 0~0.63 m/s. In both rice husk/sand and rice husk/sand/ash mixture, the minimum fluidization velocity (Umf) is observed as 0.19~0.21 m/s at feeding of 0~10 vol.% of rice husk and 0.30 m/s at feeding of 20 vol.% of rice husk. With increasing the amount of rice husk up to 30 vol.%, U_mf can not measure due to segregation behavior. The mixing index for each experiment is determined using mixing index equation proposed by Brereton and Grace. The mixing index of the mixture of rice husk/sand and rice husk/sand/ash was 0.8~1 and 0.88~1, respectively. The optimum fluidization condition was found for the good mixing and separation of rice husk ash.