Experimental Study of Fluid Flow Through Packed Beds of Glass Sphere Packing

Abstract

Fluid flow through packed bed has many important applications in chemical and other process engineering fields such as fixed-catalytic reactor, adsorption of a solute, gas absorption, combustion, drying, filter bed, wastewater treatment and the flow of crude oil in petroleum reservoir.The present work presents the study of air flow through a packed bed of glass sphere packing with 0.42, 0.50, 0.61, 0.79 and 1.01 cm in diameter, and the packed column was 7.62cm in diameter and 57 cm long. Different flow rates of fluid were used which expressed by modified Reynolds number. Many variables were studied in this work such as fluid type (airflow), flow rate and the packing porosity, in order to study the effect of these variables on the friction factor.Anew correlation for friction factor as a function of Reynolds number for air flow through packed of mono size packing has been made.The results showed that the pressure drop through a packed bed is highly sensitive to the packing porosity which has a significant effect on the friction factor. It was found that as the bed porosity increases the friction factor values as well as the pressure drop values decrease.