Abstract Steady, vertical spouting is typically sought after in spouted beds, and significant engineering effort has been devoted to suppressing spouting instabilities such as spout oscillation. However, spout oscillation does not necessarily compromise key process objectives such as rapid mixing and efficient heat transfer. Here, we present experiments and numerical simulations demonstrating that spout oscillation can be actively controlled , rather than mitigated, by pulsing the background gas flow asynchronously. By applying out‐of‐phase gas pulsation, we produce a spouted bed that oscillates at the same frequency as the gas pulses. Particle image velocimetry is used to characterize particle hydrodynamics in the presence of induced spout oscillations, while particle force data from simulations provide insights into the mechanisms governing oscillatory behavior. We show that by inducing spout oscillation, we can achieve faster mixing, a lower deadzone area, and improved particle recirculation, without increasing the overall flow rate of gas .
Spitler et al. (Fri,) studied this question.