LAMINAR FILM HEAT TRANSFER FOR COOLING OF PACKED BEDS

Abstract

As a preliminary study of the nature of the heat transfer and fluid flow between a packed bed and a bounding wall, the bed is considered to be an infinite row of rectangular compacts lying between two planes. Results are obtained numerically for the fluid flow and heat transfer in the voids between compacts and to the wall. Different gap sizes and compact-plane separation, with Prandtl numbers of 0.72 and 6, and Reynolds numbers ranging from 0 to 100 are considered. As the Reynolds number increases the heat transfer from the void decreases, increasing the gap size does improve this slightly. Decreasing the Prandtl number improves the heat transfer from the void, but increasing the compact-bounding plane separation has little effect on the overall heat transfer.