Packed and fluidized beds for elemental mercury adsorption

Title : Packed and fluidized beds for elemental mercury adsorption

Abstract:

Mercury is one of the most hazardous air pollutants. Due to high vapour pressure of mercury under ambient conditions, exposed mercury may lead to significant mercury air vapour concentration in working atmosphere. The disadvantages associated with the available treatment technologies as well as strict environmental regulations have led to search for environmentally friendly, low-cost and efficient processes for the removal of mercury from liquid as well as air. In recent years, considerable attention has been given to remove mercury through adsorption process using different adsorbents. Adsorption experiments can be performed in packed and fluidized beds both. This work focuses on packed and fluidized bed operations for elemental mercury adsorption for various mercury adsorbents. Both the systems have their own advantages. Generally, fluidization is an engineering principle in which a particulate matter in a solid-like condition is brought into a fluid-like condition. Various benefits of fluidization have been reported in literature.Fluidized bed provides better gas–solid contact, improved heat and mass transfer, uniform temperature distribution, low pressure drop, etc. The minimum fluidization velocity is an important parameter for the process design, regulation, and operation of the fluidized bed system. Also, it can be easily measured and controlled during experiments. This work provides an insight to design complete experimental setup for both packed and fluidized beds. It also explains the operational difficulties associated with both type of beds for various self synthesized sorbets . Effect of varying various process parameters shall also be explained. Particle distribution in packed bed and fluidized bed is pictorially represented in figure1. Actual packed bed setup for testing various sorbents has been shown in figure2.

Biography:

Ms Pragati Shukla is a Scientist at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, DAE India with a rich experience of more than a decade in fields like material synthesis, material characterization, adsorption, carbon nano tubes, waste management, process development, modeling & simulation. Her recent work involvessynthesis of various hybrid materials mercury detectionand adsorption having silica, Carbon nano tubes or zeolite as base material with doping of various metals, non metals &bacteria. She also has expertise in material characterization using DMA, SEM, TEM, DRUV, FTIR and XRD techniques. She has also developed the facilities for testing of synthesized materials in packed, fluidized or packed fluidized beds. She holds a Masters degree in Chemical Engineering and pursuing her PhD in same domain. She has published/presented her work in reputed journals, book chapters, technical reports, conferences and webinars. She is also a reviewer for various international peer reviewed journals.