In this work, direct contact 4-stage fluidized bed heat exchanger is experimentally studied to develop a new type of heat exchanger which recovers the energy contained in the high temperature waste gas exhausted from the industrial furnaces. A sand is used as a heat transfer medium in this experiment. To determine the optimum operating condition, 11 different perforated plates which have a different free area ratio with different hole diameter are used in the experiment. From the room temperature experiment, the pressure drop which is caused by fluidized bed formation is observed. The high temperature experiment is carried out to seek the optimum operating condition of high heat efficiency at low heat exchanger operation cost. The results of experiment are as following. The pressure drop in the high temperature condition can be predicted from the results of the room temperature experiment. And Nusselt number becomes smaller due to the increased interference between sand particles as Reynolds number increases when the dilute phase fluidized beds are formed in nigh temperature condition. But heat transfer amount through the total sand surface area become larger due to the large resident amount of sand. Considering the heat transfer amount and the heat exchanger operation cost, perforated plates which have either a 30% or 35% of free area ratio with 15mm of hole diameter are best fitted for our goal of this work. The values of .phi. which is a dimensionless number representing the absorption heat amount per unit sand rate are in the range from 0.4 to 0.5, when Reynolds number of waste gas ranges from 25-30 with these perforated plates.