Local Structure Effects on Pressure Drop in Slender Fixed Beds of Spheres

Abstract

For slender fixed beds, the void fraction and flow properties are complex topics. Different factors can influence the local bed structure. For statistical analysis, 2800 fixed beds have been generated and the impact of friction factor and reactor-to-particle diameter ratio on the distribution has been shown. With particle-resolved computational fluid dynamics, all local structure effects are taken into account for the flow simulations. Pressure drop measurements and simulations showed that these effects can lead to areas with low flow resistance, leading to overestimated pressure drop by typical correlations up to 85 %.