Liquid—solid mass transfer in packed beds of variously shaped particles at low Reynolds numbers: experiments and model

The cathodic reduction of ferricyanide ions is used to characterize liquid—solid mass transfer in porous electrodes in the creeping flow regime. Our study deals with packed beds of spheres, long cylinders and plates of low height-to-side ratio. Correlations are proposed and compared with predictive equations based on the association of the capillary representation of the porous medium with the analytical solution for mass transfer at a pipe wall, for fully developed laminar flow in short tubes.

The model leads to satisfying values of the mass transfer coefficient in the case of beds packed with spheres and parallelepipedal particles.