Effect of the presence of paste in a conical spouted bed dryer with continuous feeding

The spouted bed with inert particles has been used as a paste dryer, producing a fine powder. Few authors have studied the behavior of the bed in the presence of paste, which is important for the design of this equipment. In this work the spouting pressure drop, the minimum spouting velocity and the paste residual content in the bed were measured as a function of the feed rate. Experiments were carried out with two Newtonian pastes (egg paste and blood). a pseudoplastic one (xanthan gum suspension) and water, used as a referential material. These three types of paste behaved differently in terms of the variation of the spouting pressure drop and the minimum spouting velocity. The paste residual content in the bed was only measured with the egg paste, and in this case it increased very slightly with the feed rate, until the maximum throughput allowed by the system.