Design of long heat regenerators by use of the dispersion model

Abstract

This paper describes the behavior of the long packed bed heat regenerator in terms of the simple axial dispersion model which has so successfully accounted for nonideal flow of fluids. Thus instead of trying to determine the shape of the evolving temperature front by rigorous or semi-rigorous analytical methods this model characterizes the spreading phenomenon by the moments of its associated Gaussian distribution. This procedure, though approximate, allows one to account for all the factors which contribute to the spreading of the temperature front: axial dispersion of gas, film heat transfer and conduction into the particles. Efficiencies of heat recovery are directly calculable with this model for all sorts of operations: single pass, periodic cocurrent and periodic counter Practically all past analyses of the regenerator assumed that film heat transfer was the dominant mechanism in causing a lowering in performance of the