Experimental Imaging of Packed Bed Heat Transfer by MRI with Assessment of DEM-CFD Simulation
- Skuntz, Matthew E. [ Montana State University: Mechanical & Industrial Engineering ]
- Perera, Dinal [ Montana State University: Mechanical & Industrial Engineering ]
- Pelkie, Brenden [ Montana State University: Chemical & Biological Engineering ]
- Codd, Sarah L. [ Montana State University: Mechanical & Industrial Engineering ]
- Maneval, James E.
- Johnson, Erick L. [ Montana State University: Mechanical & Industrial Engineering ]
- Seymour, Joseph D [ Montana State University: Chemical & Biological Engineering ]
- Anderson, Ryan [ Montana State University: Chemical & Biological Engineering ]
Packed bed heating was studied with an experimental setup that allowed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurement of fluorinated pore-fluid velocity and the melting of eicosane wax bound in the bed particles. The bed particles were 3.5 mm in diameter and composed of micro-scale core-shell particles mixed with a binding agent where the core of the micro-scale particles was eicosane. The phase-change of the particle-bound wax provides a directly identifiable change in MRI signal due to T(2)changes from the solid to liquid phase. A methodology to compare experimental results to numerical results compiled in a commercial computational fluid dynamic (CFD) package is presented. The numerical beds were generated using discrete ele-ment modelling (DEM) methods with similar tube-to-particle-diameter ratio. The results showed similar rates of energy absorbed to the contained wax as measured by total NMR signal, but local melt distribution was different. This difference is evi-denced in T-2 weighted MRI images and tracking of the height to which the bed-wax has fully melted.