Heat Transfer in Fixed Beds at Very Low (<4) Tube-to-Particle Diameter Ratio

Numerical Study on Heat Transfer Performance in Packed Bed

Packed beds are widely used in industries and it is of great significance to enhance the heat transfer between gas and solid states inside the bed. In this paper, numerical simulation method is adopted to investigate the heat transfer principle in the bed at particle scale, and to develop the direct enhanced heat transfer methods in packed beds. The gas is treated as continuous phase and solved by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), while the particles are treated as discrete phase and solved by the Discrete Element Method (DEM); taking entransy dissipation to evaluate the heat transfer process. Considering the overall performance and entransy dissipation, the results show that, compared with the uniform particle size distribution, radial distribution of multiparticle size can effectively improve the heat transfer performance because it optimizes the velocity and temperature field, reduces the equivalent thermal resistance of convection heat transfer process, and the temperature of outlet gas increases significantly, which indicates the heat quality of the gas has been greatly improved. The increase in distribution thickness obviously enhances heat transfer performance without reducing the equivalent thermal resistance in the bed. The result is of great importance for guiding practical engineering applications.

Rapid imaging of fluid flow patterns in a narrow packed bed using MRI

A gradient echo rapid velocity and acceleration imaging sequence (GERVAIS) has been developed and implemented to image liquid flow within a narrow packed bed. Two-dimensional velocity images have been acquired with an in-plane pixel size of 781 microm x 781 microm, with a data acquisition time of 20 ms for a single velocity component. Images of the x, y and z velocity vectors are reported. Data are reported for Reynolds numbers (based on particle diameter) of 200 and 300. In each case, GERVAIS images are compared with the results of a standard spin-echo phase-encoding velocity measurement. At Re = 200, steady-state flow is expected and the velocity images acquired using both techniques are consistent. At Re = 300, the GERVAIS sequence is able to image the unsteady-state flow field within this system. In contrast, the standard phase-encoding velocity measurement contains significant artefacts.