Continuous drying of fine and ultrafine sands in a fountain confined conical spouted bed

The use of spouted beds for batch drying has already been approached in the literature, in which the design of internal devices and aspects related to energy efficiency have been investigated, but there is hardly any information on continuous drying. This paper analyses the performance of a fountain confined conical spouted bed in continuous drying of fine and ultrafine sands, whose configuration has been optimized in previous studies. Capacity curves have been established and the influence of operating parameters has been analyzed. Drying capacity is higher with fine sand, which is explained by the difference in physical properties of the sands. Furthermore, the best use of the energy available is attained with high sand flow rates, which allows reaching energy efficiencies above 95% and 91% for fine and ultrafine sand. This analysis allows predicting the performance of spouted beds in the continuous drying of powder materials in large scale conditions.