In this work, a short CFB riser with a height of 2.42m and an ID of 82mm was operated under different dilute operating conditions to study the fluid dynamics of FCC catalyst particles (dp=80 mu m, p=902kg/m3) in air. The electrical signals from the optical fibre probe were sampled at a frequency of 1000Hz for a period of 30s and were obtained at different positions along the radius and height of the riser. Data were analysed using both statistical methods (time average, standard deviation and frequency distribution) and chaos methods (construction of attractors; correlation dimension, DML; and Kolmogorov entropy, KML). Some results on solids holdup deduced from the electrical signal are also presented for the developed zone of the riser. It was verified that for very dilute conditions, increasing gas velocity produces more complex and less predictable fluctuations in solids concentration, while increasing solids flux generally reduces complexity and increases predictability. However, results for the most dilute condition used shows that for the radial position where solids holdup is higher (near the wall), the increase in solids concentration does not affect the mean free path of the particles, resulting in higher values of DML than in the dilute region (core). (c) 2012 Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering