The Inductive Heating of Packed Beds and its Applications to Compact Fluid Heaters and to the Regeneration of Spent Activated Carbon

Abstract

In this paper, a method is presented in order to predict the behaviour of a granular medium submitted to an inductive electromagnetic field. The resulting model is intented to give an easy and reliable characterization of energy transferred to the bed. A series of experiments was carried out and permitted a validation of the hypothesis formulated over a wide domain. A first application was studied aiming at the sizing of heaters using a stainless-steel balls bed percolated by a cold fluid. Experimental investigation of temperature profiles in both solid and fluid phases and of heat transfer coefficients between them lead to the realization of a compact fluid heater working with small difference of temperature and good efficiencies. This technique was then applied to the heating of activated carbon beds so as to allow a fast and performing regeneration.