Combustion in fluidized beds has several benefits, but a potential problem is bed agglomeration causing defluidisation. The most used counter measure is to regularly renew the bed material, inferring costs for new sand and deposition of spent material. For an adaptive optimization there is a need of a method which indicates when bed agglomeration is initializing, before it is too late to counteract.

In this project, the conductivity of fluidized beds has been measured by a novel in-situ probe. The probe has been tested in a fluidized bed of sand and ashes at temperatures up to 1000°C. In addition, the probe has been tested in a fluidized bed while burning different fuels.

The results show that the conductivity of the bed increases with temperature and concentration of ash. The conductivity varies strongly between different fuels. The signal from the probe reacts strongly to the onset of severe bed agglomeration, but it is hard to find any consistent tendencies that can be applied to predict it.