Essentials of Fluidization

A concise and clear introduction to the basics of fluidization, with a view to its applications in the process and energy industries.

John Grace is an Emeritus Professor at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada), where he has served since 1979. Prior to that he was a faculty member at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) and completed a PhD on fluidization at Cambridge University. He has published more than 590 papers, chapters and books, most of them related to the subject of the proposed book. He has chaired a number of conferences, consulted for a number of companies, and won a number of awards and honours such as the International Fluidization Award of Achievement from the Engineering Foundation, Thomas Baron Award in Fluid-Particle Systems of the AIChE, and the Particle Technology Forum Award of the AIChE.

Xiaotao (Tony) Bi completed his PhD at the University of British Columbia (UBC, Canada) in 1994, then worked in industry and returned to UBC in 1997 where he rose to the rank of Full Professor. He has published more than 300 papers and has supervised dozens of graduate students, mostly related to fluidization and associated multiphase systems. His research covers many areas including hydrodynamics, flow patterns and flow regimes, heat transfer, mass transfer, reactor performance testing, modeling and simulation, scaling and scale-up, commercial reactor trouble-shooting etc. covering gas-solids, liquid-solids, gas-liquid-solids bubbling, turbulent and circulating fluidized beds. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and a recent winner of the AIChE Lectureship Award in Fluidization.

Naoko Ellis completed a PhD on fluidization at the University of British Columbia (UBC, Canada) in 2003. As a faculty member at UBC (recently promoted to Full Professor and currently serving as Associate head for Graduate Programs), she has been actively engaged in research and supervision of graduate students on fluidization, chemical looping, biomass utilization, bio-oil upgrading, biochar, biodiesel and sustainability, publishing in each of these areas. With Professors Grace and Bi, she taught a recent graduate course on fluidization.