Numerical Study of Pressure Drop inside a Spherical Packed Bed: A Comparison of the Pore Network Model and a Immersed Boundary Method

Packed bed reactors are among the most common reactor types in chemical industries. The reactions in these reactors are generally exothermic and occur at the surface of or inside the catalytic particle packings. Understanding the fluid flow characteristics, such as the pressure drop over the bed and velocity distribution in the bed, is of great importance in the design of packed bed reactors. As the pressure drop of a packed bed directly affects the reactor’s upstream and downstream equipment, predicting the pressure drop is key in optimizing these reactors. This study uses two methods to predict the pressure drop inside a cylindrical packed bed which is randomly filled with spherical particles. First, a fully resolved Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) is used to predict the flow behavior and pressure drop inside the packed bed. Here, a ghost cell Immersed Boundary Method (IBM) is applied for describing the fluid-solid coupling. Secondly, the Pore Network Model (PNM) will be fitted to the pressure drop of IBM simulations with different Reynolds numbers and with different bed diameter to particle diameter ratios. The obtained model will be used to investigate the flow hydrodynamics and pressure drop inside the bed.