The local void fraction profile around a surface immersed in a fluidised bed has a great importance for the estimation of transport phenomena and chemical reaction rates in these units but it is rarely reported in literature. The scope of this work is to demonstrate that heat transfer measurements can be reliably used to derive the void fraction profile once a proper correlation model is available. To this aim, measurements of local heat transfer coefficient around a horizontal cylinder were performed and the angular void fraction profile was reconstructed with a new heat transfer model. The modeled void fraction profile resulted coherent with experimental and numerical evidences available in literature. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.