Flow through Packed Beds and Fluidized Beds R.

Shankar Subramanian Chemical engineering operations commonly involve the use of packed and fluidized beds. Theseare devices in which a large surface area for contact between a liquid and a gas (absorption,distillation) or a solid and a gas or liquid (adsorption, catalysis) is obtained for achieving rapidmass and heat transfer, and particularly in the case of fluidized beds, catalytic chemicalreactions. You will find a good deal of information about flow through packed and fluidizedbeds in the book by McCabe, Smith, and Harriott (2001) and Perrys Handbook (1997). Here,only a brief summary is given. First, let us consider flow through a packed bed. Packed Beds A typical packed bed is a cylindrical column that is filled with a suitable packing material. Youcan learn about different types of packing materials from Perrys Handbook. The liquid isdistributed as uniformly as possible at the top of the column and flows downward, wetting thepacking material. A gas is admitted at the bottom, and flows upward, contacting the liquid in acountercurrent fashion. An example of a packed bed is an absorber. Here, the gas contains somecarrier species that is insoluble in the liquid (such as air) and a soluble species such as carbondioxide or ammonia. The soluble species is absorbed in the liquid, and the lean gas leaves thecolumn at the top. The liquid rich in the soluble species is taken out at the bottom. From a fluid mechanical perspective, the most important issue is that of the pressure droprequired for the liquid or the gas to flow through the column at a specified flow rate. To calculate From a fluid mechanical perspective, the most important issue is that of the pressure droprequired for the liquid or the gas to flow through the column at a specified flow rate. To calculatethis quantity we rely on a friction factor correlation attributed to Ergun. Other fluid mechanicalissues involve the proper distribution of the liquid across the cross-section, and developingmodels of the velocity profile in the liquid film around a piece of packing material so thatheat/mass transfer calculations can be made. Design of packing materials to achieve uniformdistribution of the fluid across the cross-section throughout the column is an important subject aswell. Here, we only focus on the pressure drop issue. The Ergun equation that is commonly employed is given below. 1501.75 pp f Re =+ Here, the friction factor p f for the packed bed, and the Reynolds number p Re , are defined as

LV

()
1
p sp

D V Re

=
The various symbols appearing in the above equations are defined as follows. : p

Pressure Drop: L Length of the Bed:

p

D Equivalent spherical diameter of the particle defined byVolume

of the particle6Surface area of the particle

p

=
:

Density of the fluid:

Dynamic viscosity of the fluid:

s

V Superficial velocity (
s

QA

=
V where Q is the volumetric flow rate of the fluid and is

thecross-sectional area of the bed) A :

Void fraction of the bed (

is the ratio of the void volume to the total volume of the bed) Sometimes, we may use the concept of the interstitial velocity V

, which is related to thesuperficial velocity by

isi

VV

=
. The interstitial velocity is the

average velocity that prevails inthe pores of the column