Article

pubs.acs.org/IECR

A New Approach to Fixed Bed Radial Heat Transfer Modeling Using

Velocity Fields from Computational Fluid Dynamics Simulations
Mohsen Behnam,, Anthony G. Dixon,*, Michiel Nijemeisland, and E. Hugh Stitt

Department of Chemical Engineering, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester, Massachusetts 01609-2280,
United States

Johnson Matthey, P.O. Box 1, Belasis Avenue, Billingham, Cleveland TS23 1LB, U.K.
ABSTRACT: A new velocity-based approach to xed bed radial heat transfer is presented. Axial and radial velocity components
were averaged from detailed 3D computational uid dynamics (CFD) xed bed simulations of computer-generated beds of
spheres and used to model radial thermal convection. The convection terms were coupled with a radially varying stagnant bed
thermal conductivity in a 2D pseudocontinuum xed-bed heat transfer model. The usual eective radial thermal conductivity kr
and apparent wall heat transfer coecient hw were not used, and there were no adjustable parameters. The radial and axial
temperature variation predicted by the velocity-based model agreed well with the angular-averaged temperatures from the
detailed 3D CFD simulations over the range 80 Re 1900 and for N = 3.96, 5.96, and 7.99.

1. INTRODUCTION
Heat transfer in xed bed tubes is an important topic in the
chemical industry because xed beds are extensively used in
applications with heat eects, such as reactors, thermal storage
units, and adsorption or desorption plants. In particular,
multitubular xed bed reactors with low tube-to-particle
diameter ratio (N) are used for extremely exothermic or
endothermic reactions such as partial oxidations and steam
reforming of methane, respectively. Heat must be rapidly
transferred into or out of a narrow reactor tube, in which the
tube wall has a strong inuence on heat transfer and ow of
reactants around the catalyst particles. These in turn aect
catalyst activity, selectivity, and deactivation.
Current reactor models for heterogeneous gassolid reactors
have been based on fairly radical simplifying assumptions, such
as pseudohomogeneity, eective transport parameters, and
uniform catalyst pellet surroundings. Despite the realization
that local ow structures are critically important in determining
the global behavior of a ow or transport system,1 in many
cases the hydrodynamic modeling of reactors is still based on
unidirectional axial plug ow. All mechanisms for radial heat
transport are lumped into an eective radial thermal
conductivity kr, which is taken as constant and used to describe
heat transfer up to the wall. The observed increase in resistance
to heat transfer near the containing wall has been a continuing
source of diculty. The classical approach to modeling this
increased resistance near the wall is to idealize it to occur at the
wall, and lump all the mechanisms into a wall heat transfer
coecient, hw. Thus the near-wall resistance is misplaced, and
the temperature of the near-wall particles is under-predicted
(for wall heating) along with the associated reaction rate. For
narrow tubes this can be a major problem.
A review has recently been presented of the present state of
research and understanding of radial heat transfer in xed beds.2
The classical eective parameter kr hw model was extensively
described and problems with typical approaches to obtaining and
analyzing experimental heat transfer data to get kr and hw were
2013 American Chemical Society

explained. Current correlations for kr were evaluated, and the debate

over the meaning and usefulness of hw was elaborated, in the
context of the historical development of the concept. A discussion
of alternatives to the kr hw approach and their pros and cons was
made, with focus on recent eorts to include limited aspects of the
velocity eld and local bed structure. The major nding from this
review was that all current approaches to radial xed bed heat
transfer modeling suer from serious deciencies, which motivates
the completely new development of the present work.
A new approach to modeling radial heat transfer in xed beds
is proposed. The motivation for this approach is to discard the
use of eective conduction to represent transport by convective
motion of the uid, which is a purely uid mechanical
phenomenon. A second motivation is to improve the prediction
of temperature proles and heat uxes at the reactor tube wall
by incorporating the physical phenomena that cause the extra
resistance to heat transfer near the tube wall directly into the
model, and not idealizing them at the wall with an articial
temperature jump. We therefore postulate a new type of twodimensional pseudocontinuum model. For this work, the model
is also pseudohomogeneous, but this is for convenience only
and is not an essential part of the formulation.
The development of this new approach depends on the use
of 3D computational uid dynamics (CFD) for full beds of
particles3,4 to obtain the necessary information on individual
velocity components. The CFD simulation is then also used to
provide validated temperature proles to test the 2D
pseudocontinuum model. The strategy for this development
is illustrated in Figure 1. The rst step is to develop 3D CFD
discrete particle models for the detailed ow through a catalyst
packing, to provide the detailed ow elds that are responsible
Special Issue: NASCRE 3
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
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March 15, 2013
March 20, 2013
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that kr varied with tube radius, especially near the tube wall, it
was usually taken as constant to simplify both parameter
estimation and solution of the model equations. The strong
decrease in kr as the tube wall was approached was idealized to
be a heat transfer resistance located at the wall, and was
represented by the wall heat transfer coecient, hw, along with a
temperature jump at the wall. The parameters kr and hw each
reect the eects of several dierent heat transfer mechanisms, and
have proved dicult to determine over the years, especially at low
N, while reaction models based on them have been criticized as
being oversimplied. Several papers and reviews have addressed
these concerns, many of which were summarized recently.2
One of the main perceived failings of the PF model has been
the use of a radially uniform axial velocity u0 to represent ow in
the tube. A comprehensive review of uid ow in packed tubes up
to 1987 was given by Ziolkowska and Ziolkowski9 which
demonstrated that the prevailing opinion was that the constant
u0 should be replaced by vz(r) and the wall heat transfer coecient
hw should not be used. Several research groups have developed
various approaches to obtain vz(r), including extended capillary
models,10 the extended BrinkmanDarcyForchheimer equation
from either particle-based11,12 or porous-media based1315 methods,
a combination of these two models,16 and various models derived
from the volume-averaged NavierStokes equations.1720 Several of
these ow models found it necessary to introduce an eective
viscosity into the equations,12,17 which introduces another
parameter that requires estimation and to some degree negates
the advantage of dispensing with the wall coecient. In addition,
the eective radial thermal conductivity is retained, but must now
be re-estimated for use in the altered model.21,22
In parallel with the problems associated with heat transfer
modeling in packed tubes, several authors have expressed
dissatisfaction with the standard dispersion model (SDM) which
uses eective diusion to represent axial and radial dispersion23
and has drawbacks including innite speed of propagation and
overestimation of back-mixing. Some dierent approaches to this
problem have included the cross-ow model,24 the alternating ow
model,25 and the wave model, rst put forward by Stewart26 and
more recently strongly championed by Kronberg and his
colleagues.27,28 The application of the wave model to xed bed
heat transfer was demonstrated by Kronberg and Westerterp27
whose work showed that this model also results in parameters that
must be determined from experimental data.
Kronberg and Westerterp27 in particular presented a strong
argument for the need for a new approach to modeling transport
in xed beds. The crux of their argument was that for many years
we have used eective diusion and conduction models to
represent heat and mass transfer phenomena that are essentially
uid mechanical in nature. The reason for this has largely been
computational convenience, a constraint that is rapidly being eased
by the development of faster, larger computers and improved
numerical methods. It should be possible to move toward models
that more realistically represent the ow eld in a xed bed. Some
of these points of view have more recently been echoed by
Schnitzlein29 who pointed out that eective dispersion coecients
are commonly used with gradients in concentration and that a
large contribution to dispersion is uid mechanical which is solely
driven by the packing structure and not by any concentration
gradient.
One alternative approach to radial heat transfer has been to
consider two- or three-dimensional ow elds, that is, to
include velocity components transverse to the main direction of
ow. Early attempts to obtain such ow elds were made by

Figure 1. Schematic of the relationships between the models

investigated in this study.

for convective transport. Methods to generate the packings and

mesh development strategies are an essential part of this step. The
velocity and pressure elds then must be incorporated into a 3D
energy balance to give a 3D temperature eld. This is then to be
averaged to provide a 2D temperature eld T(r,z) which is the
basis for comparison to our new 2D pseudocontinuum model.
For this new model, the 3D velocity elds from the CFD model
simulations have to be coarse-grained or averaged to extract the
essential 2D information to be supplied to the pseudocontinuum
model. Our early work5 suggested that we would need vz(r) and
vr(r,z), to properly capture the radial convective transport of heat
and the near-wall changes in transport. In addition, we use the
well-established ZehnerSchlunder formula6 for conduction heat
transfer in a stagnant bed to represent the conductive contribution
ke0(r) to the overall heat ux. These contributions are both
included in the pseudocontinuum model. The resulting 2D
temperature elds are then compared against the 2D temperature
elds obtained from direct averaging of the 3D CFD results.
Further details of each of these steps in Figure 1 are provided in
the following sections.

2. BACKGROUND TO VELOCITY-BASED MODELS

The traditional approach to xed bed radial heat transfer for the
last 60 years7,8 has been the classical two-dimensional pseudocontinuum heat transfer model and its boundary conditions as
embodied in the following equations:
c pu0
kr

T
r

1 T
T
r

= kr
r r r
z

T
r

= hw (T |r = R Tw )
r=R

(1)

(2)

=0
r=0

T |z = 0 = Tin(r )

(3)
(4)

Several variations of this basic plug ow (PF) model exist,

including those that incorporate axial dispersion or conduction
terms. In this model the eective radial thermal conductivity kr
was used to represent all mechanisms for radial heat transfer
inside the bed, such as conduction, convective radial displacement of uid, and particleparticle radiation. Despite evidence
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Figure 2. Simulated packed beds for CFD analysis: (a) N = 3.96, (b) N = 5.96, (c) N = 7.99.

where some authors replaced eq 6 with

Table 1. Comparison of Experimental to ComputerGenerated Overall Voidage

T |r = R = Tw

(expt)

(computer model)

% deviation

3.96
5.96
7.99

0.476
0.451
0.431

0.466
0.450
0.432

2.1
0.2
0.2

and others included axial terms. Most neglected the radial mass
ux Gr(r,z), for example Stanek and Vychodil35 concluded that
radial ow terms were less than 1% of the velocity magnitude,
while Eigenberger36 and Froment37,38 and their co-workers
stated that strong radial ow components were found only in
the rst particle layer or a short entrance region.
The conclusions of the previous paragraph seem to
contradict the well-established idea that the main contributor
to radial heat transfer, at least as Re increases, is radial
displacement of uid around the particles, that is, convective
dispersion. One explanation is that the uid mechanics models
that were used to obtain the velocity components were all
based on averaged measures of bed structure, usually voidage.
Some used (r,z) and others only (r); however, all involved a
degree of smoothing of the bed structure. We suggest here that
the higher values of vr along the entire bed that would be
needed to account for the observed rates of radial heat transfer
are suppressed by the use of smoothed voidage elds in the
NavierStokes equations. In fact, the void fraction at a point
can have only values of zero or one, and it changes abruptly at
the local level as the radial coordinate passes from particle to
uid and back many times. It is these abrupt changes in void
fraction that give rise to the redirection of ow, giving strong
local variations in p and vr, which in turn result in the observed
radial heat transfer rates. These local variations can be averaged
out in smoothed or global approaches to xed bed structure
and uid ow.
To avoid uncertainties in the existing models of ow in xed
beds and the desire to avoid premature smoothing of the
velocity components at the local level, a dierent approach is to
use simulations of velocity elds directly in heat transfer
models. For example, Dixon et al.5 put forward a model of

Stanek and Szekely30 who substituted a two-dimensional

voidage into the dierential form of the vectorized Ergun
equation. Their model could not satisfy the no-slip condition
on the tube wall, and also highlighted the need for a realistic
voidage or other suitable measure of bed structure to obtain
ow elds. This could be provided by packing network
models31,32 or cell models33 or even statistical models34 which
have all had computational drawbacks. Several attempts have
been made to obtain two components of velocity from the twodimensional NavierStokes equations, but most of them
concluded that radial velocity components were negligible in
fully developed ow in the packed bed and reported results for
only one-dimensional models.12,19,20
Radial heat transfer models that included two components of
velocity were investigated by several authors.3538 The
equations used took the general form
1 T

T
T
r

c pGz(r , z)
+ Gr(r , z) = k r

r r r
z
r
kr

T
r

T
r

= hw (T |r = R Tw )
r=R

(5)

(6)

=0
r=0

T |z = 0 = Tin(r )

(9)

(7)
(8)
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xed-bed heat transfer that employed the uid and solid

thermal conductivities of the phases and a two-dimensional
velocity eld composed of the components vz(r) and vr(r,z).
The velocity components were calculated from a computergenerated packing, which was transformed into a network
model.31 Flows through the network branches were calculated
and then averaged to obtain the velocity components. The
model was able to give heat transfer through the bed center
reasonably well but it was not as accurate in the wall region.
One explanation was that the ow channels parallel to the wall
could not be included in the network and in addition during the
averaging process strong radial ows to and from the wall were
added to give no net ow, although the net heat transfer was
probably signicant. Problems with the network model near the
tube wall prevented further development of the heat transfer
model at that time.
Ziolkowska and Ziolkowski, in their eective viscosity
model,17 derived a ow model that was macroscopically onedimensional in the direction of the pressure drop, but which
could have local radial components which were related to uid
radial dispersion. In their later work18 a radial dispersion
coecient was included directly into the equation of continuity
and obtained by analogy from friction factor correlations. The
equation of continuity was then integrated analytically to obtain
the interstitial component vr. More recently Schnitzlein29
attempted to capture the uctuations in the local velocities
caused by the local packing structure. His approach was to use
continuum models dened in terms of a two-dimensional
spatially dependent porosity. From a computer-generated
sphere pack Schnitzlein obtained an angularly averaged voidage
(r,z) which he used in the NavierStokes equations. The
asymptotic value for the radial Peclet number was found to be
more than twice as high as the experimental value of Per() = 11.
Using a three-dimensional network model which did not involve
averaging of the bed structure, better agreement for dispersion was
found.39
Recent developments have been made in CFD which allow
the simulation of ow, heat, and mass transport in full beds of
spheres of several hundred particles.4043 Such computations
could allow the actual local values of the velocity components vz
and vr to be obtained directly by simulation, with no need for a
model. Several of these studies have presented axial velocity
vz(r) contours or proles, and more recent work has begun to
give axial proles of area-averaged radial velocity.44 The object
of the present work is to combine the model of Dixon et al.5
with CFD simulations to demonstrate the concept that kr and
hw can be replaced by the velocity components vz(r) and vr(r,z),
along with a model of stagnant bed conduction ke0(r), to give a
more physically realistic description of xed bed radial heat
transfer.

to a user-specied overlap tolerance by moving spheres in turn

so as to expand the bed vertically. A gravitational force is then
applied downward on each sphere to compact the bed, moving
the spheres so as to reduce the particle center of mass until a
stopping criterion is reached, while respecting the overlap
tolerance. The results have been found to usually be in closer
agreement with published experimental data than previous
algorithms for conned beds.
We found that the random allocation of spheres in this
collective rearrangement type of algorithm gave some
unrealistic sphere packings at the bottom layers of the bed,
especially for lower N. For these simulations, it was decided to
build the packing from a base layer with spheres in a ring
around the wall. We therefore combined the original algorithm
with an initial position algorithm46 to more realistically locate
the wall layer of spheres at the tube bottom. With some
modication this solved the problem, and this combined
random-deterministic algorithm was used to generate a range of
sphere packs with nominal diameter dp = 0.0254 m.
Three values of N were chosen for detailed study in this
work, N = 3.96, 5.96, and 7.99. These values were chosen
through consideration of the available experimental data, and
also to cover a reasonable range of N. Side views of the three
packings are included in Figure 2 to give a sense of the type of
structure that can be generated, along with the relative
dimensions. For the N = 3.96 bed, 250 spheres were used,
the N = 5.96 bed was generated from 400 spheres and for the
N = 7.99 bed there were 800 spheres in the model.
For each packing, overall voidage was calculated from the
nominal tube and particle diameters, the packed bed length,
and the number of particles. Experimental values were obtained
from the results of Mueller47 as reported in the later paper by
the same author,48 and comparisons are presented in Table 1.
The overall voidage in the computer-generated beds is generally lower, as would be expected from a soft-sphere algorithm.

3. DISCRETE PARTICLE (CFD) BED GENERATION

CFD simulations of full beds of spheres played a major role in
our methodology. We have generated a range of tube-toparticle diameter ratios (3 N 9.3) for sphere-packed beds.
To do this, we adapted a published soft-sphere algorithm45
which produces sphere packs with lower voidage than the usual
drop-and-roll packing algorithm. The algorithm rst places a
predetermined number of spheres Np of given diameter dp at
random positions inside a cylinder by allowing interpenetration
between the particles. The cylinder has diameter such as to give
a specied N, and a chosen initial voidage 0 sets the initial tube
length. The overlaps are then reduced in the absence of gravity

Figure 3. Comparison of radial bed voidage proles for N = 3.96

between experimental measurements and computer-generated sphere
pack calculations.
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The agreement is excellent for the three cases shown, with

slightly higher error for lower N.
Further validation of the computer-generated structures was
conducted by comparison of the radial voidage prole to
literature data, again from Mueller.48 The validation comparisons are shown in Figures 35, as plots of voidage as a function of

Figure 6. Verication of CFD solution for supercial axial velocity vz

for the N = 3.96 bed and Re = 240, using three mesh sizes.

of the sphere positions for the entire bed in each case using the
formulas developed by Mueller.49,50
The voidage proles for N = 3.96 are shown in Figure 3. The
prole shows two minima corresponding to the two layers of
spheres along the radial coordinate. Overall, the features and
magnitude of the experimental () are well-reproduced. The
high void fraction at the tube center ( 2) is caused by the
hole down the tube center due to the packing structure. The
voidage prole for N = 5.96 is shown in Figure 4; some slight
shift of the prole toward the tube wall may be attributed to the
soft-sphere algorithm which produces a more compacted
packing. This feature was also observed in similar algorithms
previously.45 The downturn for values of 3 is due to
anomalies at the center of the bed, where it is dicult to dene
small enough surfaces to obtain accurate values. Nevertheless,
this region is very small and of lesser importance compared
to the near-wall region where excellent agreement is found.
The voidage prole of the N = 7.99 bed is shown in Figure 5
and shows similar features and good agreement. The
magnitudes of the maxima and minima are especially accurately
found by the algorithm. The low voidage at 4 (tube center)
for the computer-generated packing is not an anomaly; for
this particular packing the spheres lined up along the
center-line.
The general good agreement shown in the graphs
demonstrates that the computer-generated sphere pack
reproduces the essential features of experimental measurements. The locations of maxima and minima are correctly
reproduced, as well as their magnitudes. This nding as well as
the results for overall voidage gives us condence in our
computer-generated models for the simulation of the velocity
and temperatures in a xed bed.

Figure 4. Comparison of radial bed voidage proles for N = 5.96

between experimental measurements and computer-generated sphere
pack calculations.

4. 3D DISCRETE PARTICLE (CFD) SIMULATION

MODEL
The equations for the CFD simulation of uid ow and heat
transfer in a single phase in this study are the equations of
conservation of mass, momentum, and energy. The conservation of mass (continuity) equation is

Figure 5. Comparison of radial bed voidage proles for N = 7.99

between experimental measurements and computer-generated sphere
pack calculations.

(ui)

+
= Sm
t
xi

the dimensionless distance from the tube wall, in multiples of

particle diameter. The voidage proles were calculated from a list
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In the simulations described here, the source term Sm was equal

to zero. The equation for conservation of momentum in
direction i is
ij
(uiuj)
(ui)
p
+ gi + Fi
=
+
+
xj
xj
xi
t

set at the tube outlet. For the energy balance, the tube wall
temperature, Tw = 368.15 K and the temperature of the inlet
ow Tin = 298.15 K were specied. At the particle soliduid
interfaces continuity of temperature and heat ux was enforced.
CFD simulations were carried out to obtain velocity and
temperature elds in full beds of spheres for the three cases,
N = 3.96, N = 5.96, and N = 7.99. The nominal particle
diameter was 1 in. (0.0254 m) in all columns and the nominal
tube diameters were 3.96 in. (0.1009 m), 5.96 in. (0.151384 m),
and 7.99 in. (0.202946 m). The models had a length of 0.0254 m
of empty tube before the bed inlet and a length of 0.0508 m of
empty tube after the bed to be able to place the inlet and outlet
boundary conditions away from the packing. The packed
lengths of the columns were as given in Figure 2. Simulations
were run over a range of ow rates to give Re in the range
802000.
The uid for the CFD simulations was taken as air with
constant properties corresponding to a bed average temperature of 333.15 K. These were density = 1.059545 kg/m3,
viscosity = 2.0291 105 kg/ms, specic heat cp = 1800 J/kgK,
and thermal conductivity kf = 0.0287 W/mK. The particles were
taken to be alumina with properties as density s = 1947 kg/m3,
specic heat cps = 1000 J/kgK, and thermal conductivity ks =
1.0 W/mK.
The model geometries and the mesh were constructed using
the commercial software GAMBIT 2.4.6, with the help of
journal les to carry out the repetitive creation and placement
of the spheres. To obtain a ne enough near-wall mesh for the
k- method we used boundary layer prism cells at outside
particle surfaces and at the tube walls; tetrahedral cells were
used in the main uid volume and inside the particles. The
unstructured tetrahedral mesh cell size was 1.524 103 m
(dp/16.7) and the boundary layer mesh thickness was 2.54
105 m (dp/1000) with three layers on the tube wall and a
single layer on the particle surfaces. The N = 3.96, 5.96, and

(11)

In this equation p is the static pressure, ij is the stress tensor,

and gi is the gravitational body force. For the present work the
external body force term Fi was zero. The stress tensor ij for a
Newtonian uid is dened by

uj
u
u
2 l ij
ij = i +
xj
xi
3 xl

(12)

Here is the molecular viscosity and the second term on the

right-hand side of the equation is the eect of volume dilation.
The energy equation is
(uih)
(h)
+
t
xi
=

j hjJj
u
Dp
T

+
+ (ik) i + S h
xi xi
xi
Dt
xk

(13)

In this equation h is the enthalpy and for the present study the
user-dened volumetric heat source term Sh was zero. Radiation
was not included in the CFD simulation model due to the
relatively low laboratory-level temperatures simulated. The
above equations were solved in their original form for laminar
ows; for turbulent ows the Reynolds-averaged Navier
Stokes (RANS) models were used, with the original equations
being ensemble-averaged.
With RANS models all turbulence length scales are modeled.
The solution variables are decomposed into mean, ui and
uctuating, ui components and integrated over an interval of
time that is large compared to the small-scale uctuations.
When this is applied to the standard NavierStokes equations,
the result is

uj
ui uj
( ui )
p
ui

= +
+
+

xi
xj
xi
xj xj
t
2 u
( uiuj )
l +
xj
3 xl

(14)

The velocities and other solution variables are now represented

by Reynolds-averaged values, and the eects of turbulence are
represented by the Reynolds stresses, ( uiuj ). To close the
system of equations the Reynolds stresses are put in terms of
the averaged ow quantities. In the present work we used a k-
two-equation model, which is a two-zone model designed to be
integrated all the way to the wall, provided that a suciently
ne mesh is used there. Descriptions of the k- turbulence
model are available in standard references and will not be
repeated here. Laminar ow models were used for the three
lowest ow rates simulated, and a turbulent ow model was
used at the highest ow rate, which corresponded to Re = 1900.
Boundary conditions for the momentum dierential
equations were provided by taking the no-slip condition on
all solid surfaces, both tube wall and particles. A uniform velocity
prole was used at the tube inlet, and a pressure of 1 atm was

Figure 7. Verication of nite element solution of 2D pseudocontinuum model with constant coecients against analytical solution at
dierent bed depths.
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Figure 8. Contours of (a) axial velocity (m/s), (b) radial velocity (m/s), and (c) temperature (K), in the x = 0 plane of the N = 3.96 xed bed and
for Re = 240. Dotted boxes indicate regions used for close-up velocity vectors shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9. Close-up analysis of boxed regions from Figure 8 with N = 3.96 and Re = 240: (a) velocity vectors colored by axial velocity (m/s),
(b) velocity vectors colored by radial velocity (m/s), and (c) temperature contours (K).

conductivity in the pseudocontinuum vzvr model, so that the

comparisons were made on the same basis.
To verify mesh independence, a mesh renement study was
carried out on the velocity proles in the N = 3.96 tube for Re =
240. Three mesh sizes were compared, the base case size of 1.524
103 m (dp/16.7), and two ner meshes of 1.27 103 m (dp/20)
and 1.016 103 m (dp/25). The three corresponding proles of
supercial velocity vz(r) are presented in Figure 6 where they are
shown to coincide almost exactly except for a small region at the
bed center, where the velocity is higher due to the hole in the
packing along the centerline which is typical for N = 4 beds. This
shows that the base case mesh (dp/16.7) is acceptable for the
present study of velocity elds.
The governing equations described above were solved using
the nite volume commercial CFD code FLUENT 6.3.26. The
pressure-based segregated solver was used, with the SIMPLE

7.99 total mesh sizes were 8.904 million, 15.579 million, and
28.47 million cells, respectively.
To remove the problem of meshing around the contact points
between the particles and between the tube wall and the particles,
the technique of shrinking the diameters of the particles to 99% of
the original diameter was used, so that the particles had an actual
diameter 0.025146 m. To provide the same size gaps for the
particlewall contact points the tube diameters were all increased
by 2.54 104 m also. This decision implied that heat transfer by
particleparticle or particle-wall area contacts was not represented
in this model. Other approaches to the problem of meshing
around contact points have been developed, and these were
recently reviewed and compared.51 Although the use of gaps
between particles does aect heat transfer uxes and temperature
distributions, in this study the same simplication was made in
applying the formula for the eective stagnant thermal
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Figure 10. Cross-section of N = 7.99 xed bed column showing radial surfaces and angular planes used for averaging and sampling of the CFD
results.

Figure 11. Averages over angular surfaces in the N = 3.96 bed, Re = 240: (a) void fraction, (b) temperature (K), (c) radial velocity (m/s), (d) axial
velocity (m/s).

in the bed center. This result implies that rst-order upwind

interpolation is adequate for calculating velocity proles, but
will likely not be sucient for calculations of pressure drop.
Under-relaxation factors were left at the FLUENT default
settings, unless some instability was observed in the iterations,
when they were occasionally reduced. The convergence was

scheme for pressure-velocity coupling. First-order upwind

interpolation was used for the convection terms; all diusion
terms used second-order discretization. Tests using secondorder upwind interpolation for N = 3.96 and Re = 240 showed
that the velocity prole was unchanged for the most part,
except for small dierences very close to the tube wall and also
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accounting for the Smoluchowski eect, as none of these

phenomena were included in the CFD model.
It was felt necessary to validate the use of the Zehner
Schlunder formula on a pointwise basis. Although others have
used this formula in this way, we are not aware of any rigorous
demonstration of its validity. The formula was developed and
tested only on bed average data by the original authors, with
some empiricism introduced which would not necessarily hold
locally. Our recent work54 on stagnant radial conduction in an
annular xed bed conrmed the pointwise use of the Zehner
Schlunder formula for the conditions of the present study.
For the convective contribution, we postulated that the
dispersion of heat by radial displacement of ow could be
simulated by a two-dimensional velocity eld using the
components vz(r) and vr(r,z). The new 2D model equations
are (for a pseudohomogeneous case):

monitored by the temperature values at the bed exit, and

checking the energy balance for the column, in addition to the
residuals. Simulations were run on a Sun Microsystems X2200
M2 x64, a 64-bit server with two dual-core processors (4 CPU
total) at 2.6 GHz each with 8 GB RAM.
Several experiments have been carried out in our group in
order to validate CFD simulations by comparison to experiments for xed bed heat transfer. During an experiment under
typical laboratory conditions, a heated tube wall packed bed
was used52 with N = 2 at relatively low ow rates of air
corresponding to Re < 2000. Thermocouples were used to
acquire temperature proles as functions of radial position.
CFD was used to model the ow and heat transfer. A very good
quantitative as well as an excellent qualitative agreement
between CFD simulation and experimental results was obtained
for heat transfer of the N = 2 xed bed column in the
laboratory, after allowance was made for unavoidable dierences between the experimental and simulation situations.
In the later study,53 CFD simulations of heat transfer in xed
beds of spheres at higher ow rates were validated by
comparison to experimental measurements in a pilot-scale rig.
The comparisons were made for particle Reynolds numbers in
the range 2200 < Re < 27000 for a tube-to-particle diameter
ratio of N = 5.45, and for particle Reynolds numbers in the
range 1600 < Re < 5600 for N = 7.44. CFD models of a 0.20 m
heated packed length, consisting of 304 spheres for N = 5.45
and 722 spheres for N = 7.44, were solved, corresponding to
the experimental setup. The CFD simulations compared well to
the experimental data: trends with Re, N, and bed depth were
captured, and the quantitative agreement of temperature
proles was reasonable, allowing for the diculties of obtaining
experimental data in larger equipment at industrially applicable
ow rates. The results of these two validation studies give
condence for the present work that CFD simulations can yield
realistic temperature elds in wall-heated packed beds.

1 +

T |r = R = Tw

(18)

T
r

(19)

=0
r=0

(20)

COMSOL nite element multiphysics software was used to

solve this pseudocontinuum two-dimensional pseudohomogeneous heat transfer model. The coecients were implemented
by the incorporation of tables for void fraction and axial
velocity as functions of r, and radial velocity as a function of r
and z, which were then interpolated as input to the nite
element method. Standard model verication tests were run by
mesh renement and demonstrated mesh independence.
To verify the nite element model, eqs 1720 were adapted
to be the same as eqs 14, solved, and compared with the
analytical series solution of those equations. Conditions were
based on laboratory experimental data for 0.5-in. ceramic
spheres in a 2-in. diameter column (N = 4) with mass ow rate
Gz = 1.982 kg/m2s, with parameters Bi (hwR/kr) = 1.2075 and
kr/kf = 103.654. The inlet feed was air at 298.15 K with the wall
temperature at 368.15 K. The analytical solution and nite
element model temperatures at three dierent bed depths
(z/L = 1/3, z/L = 2/3, and z/L = 1) were compared, as shown
in Figure 7. The symbols represent the analytical solution
temperatures; the curves represent the nite element computed
proles. The nite element solution and the analytical solution
showed excellent agreement for heat transfer in a low-N xed
bed with the same boundary conditions and heat transfer
coecient. The computed radial temperature proles coincided
almost exactly.

2
NM

kp 1
kp
B
B+1
B 1

ln

2
kp
B
N M
2
(N M )
(15)

6. AVERAGING AND SAMPLING THE 3D CFD MODEL

The CFD simulations give the 3D distributions of void fraction
(r, , z), velocity components vz(r, , z), and vr(r, , z) and
temperature T(r, , z), the latter in both uid and solid. A
major task in this research was to analyze the full 3D velocity
eld to obtain a manageable representation in terms of velocity
components, by data sampling and averaging. It is widely
accepted that the important variation in temperature is given by
T(r, z). Note that the usual techniques of volume averaging in
xed beds will not apply here as there is no separation of length
scales.

where kp = ks/kf, N M = 1 B/kp and

1 10/9

B = 1.25

(17)

T |z = 0 = Tin(r )

5. NEW 2D VELOCITY-BASED PSEUDOCONTINUUM

(vzvr) MODEL
In the new modeling approach the near-wall decrease in
thermal resistance due to changes in conduction and radial
mixing is not lumped at the wall, but instead is linked directly
to the conduction and uid ow phenomena causing the
changes. The conduction contribution to the heat transfer
model was obtained with stagnant thermal conductivity, ke0(r)
from the ZehnerSchlunder cell model,6 as a function of true
uid thermal conductivity, particle thermal conductivity, and
the radial bed voidage prole. The formula was used in the
form

ke0(r ) = k f 1

T
T 1 0 T

+ vr(r , z) =
c pvz(r )
rke (r )

z
r r r
r

(16)

In this formulation the terms for radiation and heat transfer

through nite area contacts were omitted, as well as the term
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6.1. Temperature and Velocity Contour Analysis on a

Single Plane. The axial and radial velocity and temperature
contours on a single plane at constant in the z- and
r-directions for the N = 3.96 xed bed column and Re = 240 are
presented in Figure 8 panels a, b, and c, respectively. In these
gures, only the central portion of the bed is presented, to
avoid anomalies due to end eects. This corresponded to
0.1397 z 0.4191 m, approximately ve particle layers from
the inlet and three particle layers from the bed exit.

The axial velocity in Figure 8a is high at the center of the bed

where the bed voidage is close to unity and also near the tube
wall at about r/R = 0.98. It then decreased to zero because of
the wall boundary layer no-slip condition. In addition, the axial
velocity plot shows that the ow velocities near the particle
surfaces are zero, as dened by the no-slip condition on all the
solid surfaces in the geometry. Comparisons of the axial
velocity vz to the total velocity magnitude showed that the axial
velocity was usually the dominant component. When there was
a dierence between vz and |v|, it meant that another
component of ow played a signicant role, and in this case
it was the radial velocity vr.
The radial velocity in Figure 8b exhibited positive and
negative velocities extending over a range from 0.75 to 0.82
m/s. Although most of the values clustered around zero, many
small regions could be seen with positive and negative velocities
up to 0.3 m/s in magnitude. The positive radial velocities mean
those velocity vectors which moved from center of the bed to
the tube wall, and negative radial velocities mean those
velocities which moved from tube wall to the center of the
bed. Radial velocity had a signicant eect on the temperature
distribution at a local level in the bed; when radial velocity was
negative and the ow direction was to the center of the bed
then high temperature uid owed from heated tube wall and
penetrated into the center of bed.
The temperature contours in Figure 8c show that the radial
temperature prole did not develop smoothly from the inlet to
the outlet of the bed. The temperature contours had
development and reduction in the radial position. This was
due to the eect of the radial velocity that dominated the radial

Figure 12. Supercial axial velocity proles for the three dierent
values of N, Re = 240.

Figure 13. Average of radial velocity contours in xed bed columns of (a) N = 3.96, (b) N = 5.96, and (c) N = 7.99 for Re = 80.
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heat transfer mechanism, supplemented by the uidparticle

uid conduction path, rather than to the axial velocity. The
dotted-line box superimposed on the temperature contours in
Figure 8c highlights the uneven propagation of the temperature
into the center of the bed. Corresponding dotted boxes were
also marked in Figure 8a and Figure 8b for the velocity plots.
Velocity vector plots represent the uid velocity magnitude
and direction at each control volume. To study the local
velocities corresponding to the dotted line box in Figure 8c, the
velocity vectors are presented in Figure 9a colored by axial
velocity and in Figure 9b colored by radial velocity. Figure 9c
shows the temperature development and reduction more
clearly in the line box. The velocity vectors colored by axial
velocity were high at the center and close to the tube wall in the
low voidage area where the distance between particles or
between particles and the wall was larger. The velocity vectors
colored by radial velocity had negative and positive values
depending on the particle distributions. The radial velocity
vectors illustrate how the temperature distribution to the center
of the bed was changed locally in the radial position. When the
radial velocities were negative and the velocity vectors left the
tube wall to the center of the bed (between particles 4, 5 and 6),
the temperature proles were more developed in the center of the
bed due to the enhanced transfer of high temperature uid from
the heated tube wall. However when the radial velocities were
positive and the velocity vector approached the tube wall the
temperature proles were reduced (between particles 1, 2, and 3)
as the heat transfer from the tube wall was inhibited by the local
motion of the uid.

The analysis on this single plane emphasizes the importance

of the local radial velocity components, and the necessity for
sampling and averaging methods to avoid cancellation eects
which would diminish the eect of the local velocity
uctuations.
6.2. Coarse-Graining the 3D Velocity Fields. The void
fraction and axial velocity vz were extracted from averaging of
dierent cylindrical planes in the radial direction inside the
xed bed, as illustrated in Figure 10 at the left. These two
quantities were therefore averaged over both angular () and
axial (z) coordinates. In the z-direction, again only the center
parts of the beds were used, to avoid end eects, and these
corresponded to 0.1397 z 0.4191 m for the N = 3.96 bed,
0.127 z 0.296 m for the N = 5.96 bed, and 0.0762 z
0.3048 m for the N = 7.99 bed.
To determine radial velocity as a function of radial and axial
position, the straightforward extension of the averaging method
to radial cylindrical planes subdivided into small increments in
the axial direction was not used. Instead, we dened 32 angular
planes from the center of the bed to the tube wall at 11.25
spacing. Figure 10 on the right shows the position of the
angular planes inside the xed bed. All velocities were averaged
at the same r and z position in all the angular planes together.
But the cells in the dierent angular planes were not located at
the same r and z positions because of the dierent unstructured
tetrahedral meshes in each plane. Therefore we used
interpolation for all planes to have values of the radial velocities
at the same r and z positions and then averaged them. In this
case 200 (radial) 200 (axial) points were extracted for each
plane, and then velocity components at the corresponding

Figure 14. Average of radial velocity contours in xed bed columns of (a) N = 3.96, (b) N = 5.96, and (c) N = 7.99 for Re = 240.
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the outlet area corresponds to an area of recirculating uid

behind the packing.

points of all planes were averaged. The number of angular

planes used varied depending on the N value and on Re, as it
was found that fewer planes could sometimes be used with
good results. This averaging procedure gave better resolution of
vr(r,z) than other methods that were tried, which was especially
important to capture the variation of the radial velocity near the
tube wall.
6.3. Local Features in the Averaged Fields. Figure 11
shows the angular averages of bed voidage, temperature, radial
velocity, and axial velocity for N = 3.96 at Re = 240, in the (r,z)
plane. The gures show the entire tube length, including the
unpacked inlet and outlet sections. As can be seen in Figure 11a
the 2D voidage distribution in the bed represented conrmation that assuming the voidage prole as a function of only
radial direction was a reasonable assumption, since the high bed
voidage area was located at the center of the bed and close to
the tube wall for the entire axial direction. The axial velocity
prole followed the voidage prole and it was not changed
signicantly in the axial direction so that it was also safely
assumed to be a function of radial position only (Figure 11d).
The radial velocity, in contrast in Figure 11c had a variety of
dierent values in both axial and radial directions, conrming
that it had to be assumed as a function of both r and z
directions. The averaging damped out the more extreme local
values shown in Figure 8b for a single plane, but retained
sucient variation to represent the radial heat transfer, as
illustrated in the next section. The two-dimensional averaged
temperature distribution is also shown for comparison, in
Figure 11b. The region of lower temperature at the center of

7. RESULTS OF COMPARISON OF MODELS

For the comparisons of vz() shown in Figure 12, only the
middle parts of the packed beds were used; that is, the
cylindrical surfaces were clipped to the z-values listed in section
6.2. For all the two-dimensional comparisons of vr(r,z) and
T(r,z) shown in Figures 1320 again only the middle parts of
the packed beds were used, and the z-coordinate was reset to
zero at the start of the sample region.
7.1. Axial Velocity Proles. The radially varying axial
velocity vz(r) was extracted from the averaging of dierent
cylindrical surfaces in the radial direction inside the xed bed.
The averaged axial velocity corresponding to Re = 240 is
compared in Figure 12 for all three values of N. The axial
velocity followed closely the voidage prole, therefore slow
velocities were located in high void fraction regions but in the
wall vicinity the axial velocity increased and then decreased due
to the boundary layer and the no-slip condition at the wall.
Overall, when plotted in terms of , the three proles of vz
are very similar, with maxima and minima in the same locations
and of comparable magnitude (note that the supercial velocity
was the same in each case). Some dierences may be seen
between the N = 3.96 prole and the other two proles in the
rst two velocity peaks from the wall, possibly due to the
special structure at the lowest N. For each value of N, there is
some anomalous behavior at the bed center caused by the high
or low void fractions there as discussed previously. In this plot
the values of within 0.1 from the bed center were discarded

Figure 15. Average of radial velocity contours in xed bed columns of (a) N = 3.96, (b) N = 5.96, and (c) N = 7.99 for Re = 950.
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Figure 16. Average of radial velocity contours in xed bed columns of (a) N = 3.96, (b) N = 5.96, and (c) N = 7.99 for Re = 1900.

It would be expected that vr would alternate in sign in both the

axial and radial directions as the overall averages must come to
zero, there being no net radial ow on the scale of the bed
radius. It appears that more analysis and more values of N and
Re will be needed to develop either empirical or mechanistic
approaches to predicting vr. For the purposes of the present
work, tables of values from the averaged CFD simulations are
sucient.
7.3. Radial and Axial Temperature Fields. The
comparisons between the CFD 3D discrete particle and 2D
pseudocontinuum vzvr model temperatures are presented in
Figure 17 for Re = 80. The CFD discrete particle model
temperature contours in Figure 17 were obtained from
averaging of the same 32 angular planes that were used for
the radial velocity. As can be seen, the pseudocontinuum model
temperature contours had excellent quantitative agreement with
the averaged CFD temperature contours for all three N values.
The model predicted the axial temperature distribution fairly
well; in addition the radial temperature distribution was
predicted very well. The temperature of the xed bed had a
rougher distribution in the axial direction due to the particle
heat transfer by conduction and the radial velocities distribution
between particles. Both models showed development of the
temperature into the center of the bed at the same locations. At
this lowest of the ow rates there is signicant thermal
penetration into the bed, across the entire radius for N = 3.96
and 5.96, and across most of the radius for N = 7.99. The
temperature elds for N = 3.96 have a slight dierence at the
bed center where the higher void fraction and axial velocity give
more rapid temperature development in the CFD simulation.

due to the diculty in obtaining meaningful averages with very

small radial surfaces.
7.2. Radial Velocity Fields. Radial velocities vr(r,z) were
obtained from the averaging of dierent angular planes at
dierent angular positions. The average radial velocity contours
for the N = 3.96, 5.96, and 7.99 xed bed columns are
presented in Figure 13, panels a, b, and c, respectively, for Re =
80, and in the corresponding three parts of Figure 14 for Re =
240, again for N = 3.96, 5.96, and 7.99. Similarly the radial
velocity elds for the three N at the transitional value Re = 950
are given in Figure 15 and under turbulent ow conditions at
Re = 1900 in Figure 16.
Considering each Re value separately, there does not appear
to be a great deal of similarity between the three N values for
each ow rate. Both N = 5.96 and N = 7.99 show higher values
of vr near the bed center, and more extreme values than does
N = 3.96. This may be attributed to the stronger axial bypassing
both along the tube wall and down the bed center which is
peculiar to the N = 3.96 bed structure.
If the four dierent vr(r,z) elds corresponding to the four
dierent Re are compared for each N individually, some
patterns start to emerge. The regions at high positive vr for N =
5.96 and N = 7.99 are in the same positions near the centerline.
They alternate axially with patches of strongly negative vr. High
magnitudes of vr appear to occur in bands in between the layers
of particles arranged against the tube wall. Regions of vr close to
zero correspond to averages at positions which are mostly inside
the layers of particles. It is possible to discern two, three, and four
axial bands corresponding to the two, three, and four particles
along the bed radius for N = 3.96, 5.96, and 7.99, respectively.
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Figure 17. Comparison of CFD 3D discrete particle model temperature contours and 2D vzvr pseudocontinuum model temperature contours in
xed bed column of (a) N = 3.96, (b) N = 5.96, and (c) N = 7.99 for Re = 80.

Figure 18. Comparison of CFD 3D discrete particle model temperature contours and 2D vzvr pseudocontinuum model temperature contours in
xed bed column of (a) N = 3.96, (b) N = 5.96, and (c) N = 7.99 for Re = 240.
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Figure 19. Comparison of CFD 3D discrete particle model temperature contours and 2D vzvr pseudocontinuum model temperature contours in
xed bed column of (a) N = 3.96, (b) N = 5.96, and (c) N = 7.99 for Re = 950.

Figure 20. Comparison of CFD 3D discrete particle model temperature contours and 2D vzvr pseudocontinuum model temperature contours in
xed bed column of (a) N = 3.96, (b) N = 5.96, and (c) N = 7.99 for Re = 1900.
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For N = 5.96 the two temperature elds are very similar, with
the CFD temperature level slightly lower at the outlet, but
otherwise the comparison is good. For N = 7.99 the two
temperature elds are in excellent agreement, with even smaller
details the same. This demonstrates that the new model can
predict the convection and conduction heat transfer locally with
the pseudocontinuum energy equation very well in a 2D model
for low Reynolds numbers for which conduction and
convection both play signicant roles.
The temperature contours for Re = 240 for all N are shown in
Figure 18. It is seen that at this higher ow rate there is less
penetration of the thermal front into the bed than for the lower
ow rate. The temperature contours between CFD and the vzvr
model were in generally good agreement. However, close to the
center of the bed, the CFD temperature developed more than in
the vzvr model; this was especially so for N = 3.96 and somewhat
the case for N = 5.96. Since the center of the bed was taken as a
symmetric boundary condition in the vzvr model the velocity
prole close to the center had to satisfy this boundary condition
limitation and could not develop in the same way as for the CFD
model. For N = 7.99 the two temperature elds were again in
excellent agreement.
The temperature contours at the much higher ow rate Re =
950 for all three N are shown in Figure 19. The simulations for the
near-turbulent regime Re = 950 could be run as either laminar or
turbulent models in the CFD; in this work Re = 950 was assumed
as laminar ow and the ow from CFD showed reasonable results.
The results are more sensitive to the averaging method for higher
Reynolds number compared to the low Reynolds numbers since
the radial velocities have lower negative and higher positive values,
so it was necessary to average more angular surfaces to avoid low
or high radial velocities at dierent points, which would then
cancel with the averaging method. Averaging of more angular
surfaces extracted better radial velocities to be used in the
pseudocontinuum vzvr model. This may account for the stronger
appearance of discrete temperature features in the N = 3.96 vzvr
model results, although generally the near-wall comparisons were
good. For N = 5.96 the vzvr temperature is a little low, and also for
N = 7.99. The extent of the temperature contours and the general
shape of the developing contours are both good in all three cases.
The temperature contours for turbulent ow at Re = 1900 for
all N are shown in Figure 20. The CFD and pseudocontinuum
model temperature comparison showed some slight dierences
in the results. This was due to the dimensional reduction of 3D
to 2D. There is a wider wall region of high temperature for the
vzvr model than in the CFD simulations, but comparisons show
very good results for all three N for the temperature levels
across the tube radius, in terms of both extent and magnitude.
Overall, the 2D pseudocontinuum heat transfer model based
on the velocity elds from CFD produced very reasonable
results compared to the 3D CFD temperature simulations
without the need to introduce any adjustable parameters such
as kr/kf and hw or an eective viscosity.

medium cell model applied pointwise to account for heat

transfer by thermal conduction and its dependence on local bed
voidage.
Fluid ow elds in validated xed beds of spheres of tube to
particle ratio N = 3.96, 5.96, and 7.99 were obtained by solving
the 3D NavierStokes equations in a detailed CFD approach
which preserved the actual bed structure in the simulation. A
methodology was developed to obtain the axial velocity, vz(r),
and radial velocity, vr(r,z) from the 3D discrete particle results.
Stagnant eective thermal conductivity was calculated at each
radial position from the Zehner-Schlunder model as function of
local bed porosity, uid thermal conductivity, and solid thermal
conductivity.
Comparisons were made for Reynolds numbers in the range
801900, for the three values of N, under typical laboratoryscale conditions that would be used with a steam-heated
column. The temperatures calculated by the new 2D velocitybased heat transfer equation showed very good quantitative and
qualitative agreement with the values given by the detailed
CFD simulation. The trends with Re and N were captured well.
The results of this study suggest that the local radial velocity
components can account for the convective contributions to
radial heat transfer in a packed bed of spheres. They are not
negligible if computed from CFD simulations in model
geometries that preserve the discrete bed structure instead of
replacing it with a pseudocontinuum or eective medium. As
the ultimate objective is a computationally tractable 2D
pseudocontinuum reaction engineering model, care needs to
be taken in averaging the information from the 3D discrete
simulations for use in lower-dimensional eective models.
Earlier approaches that began from eective medium models
with smoothed measures of bed structure substituted into the
volume-averaged NavierStokes equations or their equivalent
to obtain velocity elds, all concluded that radial velocity
components were negligible as the smoothed structure led to
the result that (p/r) 0 and thus to vr 0, as the local radial
variations in pressure and velocity were averaged out. The axial
and radial velocity proles obtained in this study suggested that
it may be possible to obtain generalized velocity components
for use in a predictive model.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Corresponding Author

*E-mail: agdixon@wpi.edu.
Present Address

Department of Chemical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute

of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA 02139, USA.
Notes

The authors declare no competing nancial interest.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This material is based upon work supported by the National
Science Foundation under Grant No. CTS-0625693.

8. CONCLUSIONS
The main object of this work was to demonstrate the feasibility
of modeling radial temperature proles in xed beds of spheres
without using any adjustable parameters such as kr/kf and hw,
and without using eective heat conduction approaches for
uid mechanical phenomena. Instead, radial heat transfer was
to be predicted using local position-dependent components of
axial and radial velocity to represent heat transfer by uid
motion and its decrease near the tube wall, and a local eective
15259

NOMENCLATURE
cp = uid specic heat, J/(kgK)
cps = solid specic heat, J/(kgK)
B = shape parameter for ZehnerSchlunder formula
Bi = wall Biot number, hwR/kr
dp = particle diameter, m
dt = tube diameter, m
Fi = external body force per unit volume, kg/(m2s)
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gi = body force in i-direction per unit mass, m/s2

Gr = radial mass ux, kg/(m2s)
Gz = axial mass ux, kg/(m2s)
h = specic enthalpy, J/kg
hi = specic enthalpy of species i, J/kg
hw = apparent wall heat transfer coecient, W/(m2K)
Ji = mass diusive ux of species i, kg/(m2s)
k = turbulent kinetic energy, J/kg
ke0 = stagnant eective thermal conductivity, W/(mK)
kf = uid thermal conductivity, W/(mK)
kp = thermal conductivity ratio, ks/kf
kr = eective radial thermal conductivity, W/(mK)
ks = solid thermal conductivity, W/(mK)
L = bed length, m
N = tube-to-particle diameter ratio, dt/dp
NM = parameter for ZehnerSchlunder formula
Np = number of particles in computer-generated packing
p = static pressure, Pa
Per() = limiting value of Peclet number (Gzcpdp/kr) at
high Re
r = radial coordinate, m
R = tube radius, m
Re = Reynolds number based on particle diameter, dpvz/
Sh = energy source term, J/(m3s)
Sm = mass source term, kg/(m3s)
t = time, s
T = temperature, K
Tin = inlet temperature, K
Tw = wall temperature, K
ui = generic velocity component in direction i, m/s
u0 = supercial plug-ow velocity, m/s
vr = radial velocity component, m/s
vz = axial velocity component, m/s
xi = coordinate direction i, m
z = axial coordinate, m

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Greek Letters

= bed voidage
0 = initial voidage for bed generation
= eective thermal conductivity of the uid (molecular and
turbulent), W/(mK)
= angular coordinate, radians
= uid viscosity, kg/(ms)
= dimensionless distance from tube wall, (Rr)/dp
= uid density, kg/m3
s = solid density, kg/m3
ij = viscous ux of j-momentum in the i-direction, kg/ms2
= specic dissipation rate, s1

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