The existence of universal pressure loss and heat transfer correlations for packed beds

Packed beds are used for solar power energy storage, in the chemical and process industries, and in nuclear reactors. Mining ventilation coolth is the application of interest where the energy storage capabilities of rock aggregate may provide an economical and environmentally friendly heat exchanger solution. Particle-resolved simulations using ANSYS Fluent were obtained from uniform and Rosin-Rammler distributions of spherical and polyhedra particles within the pore Reynolds number range Re-pore = 15-3000. This paper increases confidence in using discrete element methods to numerically generate a random packed bed and demonstrates that computational capability exists to resolve over 1000 non-spherical particles. Following the principle of dimensional homogeneity, all packed beds are expected to conform to drag coefficient C-D = 38.363/Re-pore(0.928) + 0.291 and Nusselt number Nu = 0.430Re(pore)(0.580) Pr-1/3 + 1.274, meaning that coefficient of performance can be estimated for any rock aggregate.