Fluidized bed reactors for biomass conversion and greenhouse gas mitigation

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The proposed research covers both the fundamentals and applications of fluidized bed reactors.      The fundamental research will focus on understanding the electrostatics phenomena of fine powders, which are generated during contact of particles of similar and dissimilar properties by developing a novel acoustic levitation test apparatus. The findings will be extended to interpret particle charging in fluidized beds where particles are colliding each other and with the reactor walls. The fluidization particle charging experiments will be performed in a fluidized bed unit. This work is part of a globally leading research program at UBC started in late 1990s to understand particle charging and impact on fluidization behaviour in fluidized bed reactors and other particle handling systems. The results will be applied to the polymer, pharmaceutical and biomaterial processing industries in Canada and abroad. The NSERC Discovery grant will support one PhD student each year for 5 years.       The applied research will focus on the development of the first mathematic model for the novel microwave-assisted gas-pulsating horizontal fluidized bed catalytic reactor, which has been developed in my lab, patented and applied for converting biomass residues to biofuels and biochar, which as a carbon negative technology will contribute to decarbonizing Canadian industry sector. The model will be validated using the pilot plant test data and then applied for optimizing the operating parameters and assisting the scale up and design of commercial reactors for catalytic pyrolysis of biomass residues and waste plastics to high quality biofuels and biochar products. A pilot reactor has been commissioned in our lab with funding from a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) major equipment grant, as part of a new Biorefining Research and Innovation Centre (BRIC). The NSERC Discovery grant will support one PhD student each year for 5 years.