Abstract

The aerodynamic behavior of wet for-estry biomass particles mechanically shaken in a fluidized bed was analyzed with turning velocity be-tween 0.5 and 2 r.p.s. It was concluded that the agita-tion exerts an important effect on the fluidization of wet biomass particles. The effect of the agitator is not relevant if the particles have low humidity con-tent. In addition, a methodology based on the Er-gun’s equation for the calculation of the specific bio-mass particle surface, with a degree of acceptable correlation (R2 > 0.96) was proposed. For the predic-tion of the minimum fluidization velocity, a new cor-relation allowing fitting the experimental values with deviations of ± 15% for dry and wet particles, was also proposed.