Emrah Özahi

A Modification on Ergun's Correlation for Use in Cylindrical Packed Beds With Non-spherical Particles

An experimental study was conducted to determine the pressure drop characteristics of cylindrical packed beds through which turbulent pipe flow was passing. This study was planned to clarify the applicability of the well-known Ergun correlation proposed for beds composed with spherical particles on beds with non-spherical particles. The experimental packed beds were constructed by using two different irregular-shaped and one spherical-shaped packing materials for understanding the effects of particle shape or sphericity, particle size, bed porosity, and bed length to diameter ratio on the pressure drop. The beds were constructed by using zeolite, chickpea and glass bead materials to cover the particle sphericity range of 0.55 ≤ Φ ≤ 1.00. Systematic experiments and the data analysis procedure showed that the well-known Ergun correlation can be applied to all of the experimental beds composed with non-spherical and/or spherical particles with a maximum deviation of ±20%. This deviation can, however, be decreased to a negligible level of ±4% if some simple modifications, including the use of particle Reynolds number, Rep, a new form of particle friction factor, f*p, and some adopted empirical constants in the well-known Ergun correlation, are used.