A Numerical Study on the Influence of Confining Walls on Drag and Heat Transfer Coefficients in Single-Particle Lab-Scale Reactors

Single-particle reactors in lab-scale are a promising technology to gain an in-depth understanding of the intricate reaction and transport processes that occur in catalyst particles under operando conditions. It is not described whether the effect of the bounding walls in such narrow flow channels influence the processes at the particle. Therefore, this work applies three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to analyze the drag coefficient C_D alongside the local and average particle Nusselt number Nu_p as characteristic local and integral quantities in the range of particle Reynolds numbers 10 ≤ Re_p ≤ 10³. An equation is derived to correct for the wall effects on C_D and Nu_p and assist the experimenter in the interpretation of measured results.