Prediction of thermal behavior of trickle bed reactors: the effect of the pellet shape and size

MARÍA J. TAULAMET; NÉSTOR J. MARIANI; GUILLERMO F. BARRETO; OSVALDO M. MARTÍNEZ

FUEL

ELSEVIER SCI LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2017 vol. 202 p. 631 - 640

0016-2361

Heat transfer plays an importantrole in several applications of packed bed reactors with cocurrent downflow ofliquid and gas (widely known as trickle-bed reactor ?TBR).A literature survey shows that theamount of articles dealing with the prediction of heat transfer rates between aTBR and an external heating or cooling source is limited for spherical catalystpellets and definitively scarce for other pellet shapes as cylinders andmultilobe.Results from an experimental programdevoted to study heat transfer between a TBR and an external jacket, employingspherical and cylindrical particles and a commercial trilobe pellet, arepresented. A wide range of gas (air) and liquid (water) flow rates were coveredcorresponding to low and high interaction regime. A two dimensional pseudohomogeneousmodel was employed to represent the thermal behavior of the packed bed. Valuesof the effective radial thermal conductivity and the wall heat transfercoefficient were obtained by regression of radial temperature profiles forthree different bed lengths. Finally, expressions to estimate both parametersfor the different particle shapes were developed, thus providing a usefulpredictive tool, not available in the literature up to the best of ourknowledge.