Last night, my little nephew asked me if people can sleep on a fluidized bed, “of course no”, I said, “Then why?” he asked. “Because that fluidized bed is not bed”…..

That is not a satisfying answer for both of us. Before I went to bed, I searched for good explains online, then I know what is fluidized bed and the history of it.

A fluidized bed is formed when a quantity of a solid particulate substance (usually present in a holding vessel) is placed under appropriate conditions to cause the solid/fluid mixture to behave as a fluid. This is usually achieved by the introduction of pressurized fluid through the particulate medium. This results in the medium then having many properties and characteristics of normal fluids; such as the ability to free-flow under gravity, or to be pumped using fluid type technologies.

The resulting phenomenon is called fluidization. Fluidized beds are used for several purposes, such as fluidized bed reactors (types of chemical reactors), fluid catalytic cracking, fluidized bed combustion, heat or mass transfer or interface modification, such as applying a coating onto solid items.

In 1922 von Winkler designed a reactor that for the first time utilized a coal gasification process. Further application of the fluidized bed included the catalytic cracking of mineral oils in the 1940s. During this time theoretical and experimental research improved the design of the fluidized bed. In the 1960s VAW-Lippewerk in Lönen implemented the first industrial bed for the combustion of coal and later for the calcination of aluminium hydroxide.