Darcy Flow and Heat Transfer Through Porous Media Inside a Horizontal Fixed Packed Bed

Abstract

The present work is focused on the simulation of forced convection airflow through a horizontal fixed packed bed. The flow was considered at low Reynolds numbers (0.01 to 5), where the problem was governed by the Darcy model and the solution performed by COMSOL Multiphysics 05. The analysis was carried out under the assumptions of steady, incompressible, Newtonian, constant fluid properties. For the thermal conditions, a uniform wall heat flux at the wall boundary is taken to be constant as q = 150 W/m² while the porosity of the bed is set to be as ԑ = 0.39. The results showed that the temperature is greatly affected by the Reynolds number. As the Reynolds number increases the Nusselt number and convective heat transfer coefficient increase consequently the temperature decreases through all the bed, also the pressure drop through the bed increases as the Reynolds number increases and vice versa.