Advances in Chemical Engineering and Science, 2015, 5, 225-238 Published Online July 2015 in SciRes. http://www.scirp.org/journal/aces http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/aces.2015.53024 How to cite this paper: de Pádua, T.F., Béttega, R. and Freire, J.T. (2015) Gas-Solid Flow Behavior in a Pneumatic Conveying System for Drying Applications: Coarse Particles Feeding with a Venturi Device. Advances in Chemical Engineering and Sci- ence, 5, 225-238. http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/aces.2015.53024 Gas-Solid Flow Behavior in a Pneumatic Conveying System for Drying Applications: Coarse Particles Feeding with a Venturi Device Thiago Faggion de Pádua, Rodrigo Béttega, José Teixeira Freire Department of Chemical Engineering, Federal University of São Carlos, São Carlos, Brazil Email: tfpadua@gmail.com Received 12 May 2015; accepted 15 June 2015; published 19 June 2015 Copyright © 2015 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Abstract The feeding of coarse particles (>0.5 mm diameter) directly into a riser operating at positive pressure is important for drying and pre-heating applications. The presence of the feeding device can lead to heterogeneity of drying and heating, and is the main factor responsible for pressure loss in short conveying systems. However, there is a lack of information concerning the axial and radial distributions of coarse particles in this type of configuration, despite the recent advances when dealing with fine particles (FCC catalyst). The present work therefore investigates a vertical venturi feeder with the conveying system operating in dilute-phase regime with 1 mm spherical glass particles. Experimental assays revealed the behavior of the mass flow rate of solids in the system, and pressure measurements were made along the riser in order to evaluate the accuracy of simulations. Euler-Euler simulations provided close estimation of the experimental pressure drop and the pressure drop according to distance in the linear region. Simulation of the fluid dy- namics in the riser showed that solids clusters were formed at low concentrations near the feed- ing device, reflecting heterogeneity in the solid phase volume fraction. Keywords Pneumatic Conveying, Venturi Feeder, Coarse Particles, Drying, CFD 1. Introduction Pneumatic conveying offers an alternative for the drying and pre-heating of solids [1]-[4]. One of its advantages