eXtended Discrete Element Method used for convective heat transfer predictions

Packed bed reactors dominate a broad range of engineering applications. In a packed bed reactor, heat is transferred from the solid particles to the gas flow stream through the void space between particles. Using a XDEM approach, continuous and discrete phases have been coupled in order to predict convective heat transfer between solid and fluid within packed beds. For the solid matrix a discrete intra-particle model, namely DPM, was used to solve for each particle of the bed, and a CFD tool was employed to resolve the fluid flow.