A critical review of dispersion in packed beds

Abstract

The phenomenon of dispersion (transverse andlongitudinal) in packed beds is summarized and reviewedfor a great deal of information from the literature.Dispersion plays an important part, for example, incontaminant transport in ground water flows, in miscibledisplacement of oil and gas and in reactant andproduct transport in packed bed reactors. There areseveral variables that must be considered, in the analysisof dispersion in packed beds, like the length of thepacked column, viscosity and density of the fluid, ratioof column diameter to particle diameter, ratio of columnlength to particle diameter, particle size distribution,particle shape, effect of fluid velocity and effect of temperature(or Schmidt number). Empirical correlationsare presented for the prediction of the dispersion coefficients(DT and DL) over the entire range of practicalvalues of Sc and Pem, and works on transverse andlongitudinal dispersion of non-Newtonian fluids inpacked beds are also considered.