Institute for Process Engineering

Chair of thermal process engineering

Contact heat transfer and heat conduction in packed beds of edged particles

A central parameter of thermal DEM is the particle-particle heat transfer coefficient during binary contacts. Contact heat transfer is always important when heat is transmitted from a wall to an adjoining bed of particles in order to conduct thermochemical processes, but in presence of steep temperature profiles, it can also be significant when heat is supplied from the gas phase. Despite of its central role, simplified models, the validity of which is questionable even in the case of equally sized spheres, are used to calculate contact heat transfer. Despite many practical applications, any reliable background is missing in the case of edged, polyhedral particles.

The main goal of the research is to develop a new and more reliable way of predicting the heat transferred when particles come for a certain period of time in contact with each other from effective packed bed thermal conductivity. Therefore, effective packed bed thermal conductivity shall be investigated by experiments and simulations for a wide range of different polyhedral particles. This will enable the prediction of effective thermal conductivity and contact heat transfer not only for spheres but also for arbitrary materials that consist of polyhedron-like particles. In this frame, packed bed porosity and the relative area of flat interparticle contacts will also be derived from X-ray μ-CT imaging results and correlated with adequately defined particle form parameters. Moreover, interstitial packed bed morphology, including pore size variability, will be characterized. Effective packed bed thermal conductivity and particle-particle heat transfer coefficient will be considered based on average values. Ultimately, the research goal is to place the thermal part of the DEM on a scientifically well-founded and technically easily usable basis for particles of any shape.

This research is part of Collaborative Research Center/Transregios 287 "Bulk-Reaction." More information on the whole collaborative project can be found on site: https://bulk-reaction.de/.

1. Rodrigues, S.J., Vorhauer-Huget, N., Tsotsas, E.: Effective thermal conductivity of packed beds made of cubical particles, Intern. J. Heat Mass Transfer, 194 (2022), 122994. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatmasstransfer.2022.122994
2. Rodrigues, S.J., Vorhauer-Huget, N., Richter, T., Tsotsas, E.: Influence of particle shape on tortuosity of non-spherical particle packed beds, Processes, 11 (2023), 3. https://doi.org/10.3390/pr11010003
3. G. Xuan, E. Mirko, S.J. Rodrigues, N. Vorhauer-Huget, L. Christian, B. Fond, Multi-point temperature measurements in packed beds using phosphor thermometry and ray tracing simulations, Particuology (2023). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.partic.2023.03.015

4. J. Fischer, S.J. Rodrigues, M. Kriegeskorte, N. Hilse, E. Illana, V. Scherer, E. Tsotsas. Particle-particle contact heat transfer models in thermal DEM: A model comparison and experimental validation, Powder technology (2023) 118909. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.powtec.2023.118909

5. S.J. Rodrigues, N. Vorhauer-Huget, E. Tsotsas, Prediction of effective thermal conductivity of packed beds of polyhedral particles, Powder technology (2023) 118997. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.powtec.2023.118997