Experimental and Numerical Study of Particle Heating Using DC Discharge

Abstract

The main aim of this work is experimental and numerical study of heat and mass transfer in fixed beds by the Joule heating effect, which is a volume-based type of heating rather than surface-based. This is aimed at looking more into energy storage technologies where electrical energy is stored as chemical energy i.e. Energy to Chemicals (E2C) concept. Experiments were carried out for fixed bed heating with and without gas flowing through the bed and temperature measurements with time were taken at the center and outlet of the bed for solid and gas temperatures respectively. The experiments were carried out with 15 W, 22.5 W and 42 W powers and also with four mass flow rates ranging from 1.27 ×10−7 to 6.13 ×10−7 kg/s. The experimental results were then validated against numerical and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models. It was observed that since the bed was not insulated, heat was lost at the wall and also that the gas temperature increases at the outlet with mass flow rate. This was attributed to the fact that for lower mass flow rates, the gas tends to moves along the wall from the inlet to the outlet of the bed. Based on this knowledge of heat and mass transfer in fixed beds with electrical heating, a preliminary study of energy storage, in particular, steam reforming of methane, was then carried out.