Magnetic resonance velocity imaging of turbulent gas flow in a packed bed of catalyst support pellets

Abstract

Compressed sensing magnetic resonance methods have been used to image the time-averaged velocity and turbulent kinetic energy in 3D for turbulent gas flowing through a bed of porous, hollow cylindrical catalyst support pellets. Velocity and turbulent kinetic energy images were acquired at a spatial resolution of 0.70 mm (x) × 0.70 mm (y) × 1.0 mm (z) for particle Reynolds numbers, Rep, of 500, 2500 and 6500 in a bed with a tube-to-particle diameter ratio of 4.7. These data represent the first full-field measurements of turbulent gas flow in packed beds of non-spherical pellets. The resulting images reveal several interesting features of the hydrodynamics in this system. A large degree of flow heterogeneity is observed in the bed, with regions of high-speed fluid observed near the walls and in large voids, and regions of backflow observed in the wake of pellets, between pellets, and within the pellet holes. For increasing Rep, the normalized axial velocity at the wall is found to increase, and the normalized turbulent kinetic energy becomes more homogeneous throughout the bed. The correlation between the turbulent kinetic energy and time-averaged velocity shows that the highest turbulent kinetic energy occurs in regions of intermediate time-averaged velocity. Further, the turbulent kinetic energy profile at the pellet-scale is substantially different from the case of simple channel flow for Rep≥ 2500. Overall, these measurements clearly demonstrate the ability of magnetic resonance methods for acquiring full-field flow data in packed bed systems using commercially-relevant pellets and flow conditions.