Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3037 3040

www.elsevier.com/locate/ces

Shorter communication

Wall e!ects for the pressure drop in %xed beds

R. Di Felicea; , L.G. Gibilarob
a Dipartimento

di Ingegneria Chimica e di Processo G.B. Bonino, Universita degli Studi di Genova, via Opera Pia 15, 16145 Genova, Italy
di Chimica, Ingegneria Chimica e Materiali, Universita degli Studi di LAquila, Monteluco di Roio, 67040 LAquila, Italy

b Dipartimento

Received 23 May 2003; received in revised form 18 November 2003; accepted 31 March 2004

Abstract
A very simple model is presented for the e!ect of the container wall on the pressure drop in a 5uid 5owing through a bed of spheres.
It is based on the application of the Ergun equation to the bulk region of the bed, una!ected by the wall. Pressure loss predictions are
found to correspond well to the opposing trends reported in the literature for the viscous- and inertial-5ow regimes.
? 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Hydrodynamics; Packed bed; Reaction engineering; Void-fraction; Wall e!ects; Viscous and inertial 5ow

1. Introduction
The pressure drop for 5uid 5ow through a column packed
with solid particles is commonly evaluated by means of the
empirical Ergun (1952) equation:
?P
= aU + b2 U 2 ;
(1)
L
where for monosize spheres the viscous and inertial regime
coeCcients become:




 (1 )2
 1
a = 150 2
: (2)
and
b
=
1:75
d
3
d
3
Eqs. (1) and (2) imply that for a given physical system
(which speci%es 5uid density and viscosity and particle diameter) the pressure drop depends solely on two variables:
the void fraction and the 5uid 5ux U , which in practice
may be obtained from the experimental parameters:
Q
W
(3)
and U = :
=1
p AL
A
Pressure drops estimated from Eqs. (1) and (2) using average values of and U obtained, for example, by means of
Eq. (3)may be designated ?Ph , because the implicit assumption in this approach is of an e!ectively homogenous
bed. In the presence of bed inhomogeneities, however, ?Ph
Corresponding author. Tel.: +39-010-353-2924;
fax: +39-010-353-2586.
E-mail address: difelice@dichep.unige.it (R. Di Felice).

0009-2509/$ - see front matter ? 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ces.2004.03.030

may represent a signi%cant over or under estimation of the

actual pressure drop ?P.
The assumption of homogeneous 5uid velocity and void
fraction distributions throughout a bed cannot be true near
the container wall, where the solid particles have to arrange
themselves di!erently, close to the wall the void fraction
and, as a consequence, the 5uid velocity will tend to be
greater than in the bulk region. For the majority of cases
of practical interest the wall region represents a suCciently
small fraction of the whole for the e!ect of this inhomogeneity to be negligible. The purpose of this note is to present a
simple model for wall e!ects in situations where this is no
longer the case: where the bed/particle diameter ratio, D=d,
is relatively low, down to about 5. Under these conditions
quite signi%cant deviations of ?P from predictions based on
the assumption of a homogeneous bed have been reported.
It will be seen that the model leads to a remarkably simple
resolution of the problem, enabling the Ergun equation to be
applied directly to the bulk region of the bed, thereby circumventing uncertainties associated with the 5uid-dynamic
conditions in the region close to the wall.
A thorough review of the wall e!ect phenomenon has
been presented in a fairly recent publication in this journal (Eisfeld and Schitzlein, 2001). In this paper some 2500
data points from numerous literature sources are reported
in terms of the values for the two constants in the Ergun
equation, obtained by linear regression of the individual
data sets. For homogeneous beds these constants assume
values of 150 and 1.75 for low and high Reynolds number conditions, respectively, Eq. (2). The data span the full

3038

R. Di Felice, L.G. Gibilaro / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3037 3040

spectrum of 5ow conditions and, as is to be expected, reveal considerable scatter. Nevertheless, the surprising trends
uncovered are quite clear and con%rm the observations of
many workers in the %eld: for low Reynolds numbers a progressive decrease in the D=d ratio leads to a progressive increase in the viscous regime constant of the Ergun equation,
and hence to an increase in observed ?P over that estimated
with the assumption of homogeneous conditions, ?Ph . For
high Reynolds numbers, on the other hand, the reverse is
found to be the case, a progressive decrease in D=d, leading to a progressive decrease in ?P with respect to ?Ph .
A qualitative explanation for this at %rst sight strange result
has been given by Nield (1983): the wall region can provide con5icting e!ects on pressure loss because, on the one
hand, the increase in void fraction leads to a reduction in
resistance to 5ow, whereas, on the other, wall friction itself
leads to an increase in resistance. We now see how these observations may be placed on a simple, quantitative footing.
2. The two-zone ow model
We consider the parallel 5ow of 5uid through two zones,
the bulk zone and the wall zone, as illustrated in Fig. 1.
This gives rise to the observed pressure loss ?P: ?P =
?Pb =?Pw . In the bulk zone no wall e!ect is felt so that the
usual Ergun equation may be applied to obtain the required
pressure loss. To do this, however, we need values for the
two variables, void fraction b and 5uid 5ux Ub applicable
to this zone. These may be estimated as follows.

2.1. The bulk zone void fraction b

As the bulk zone represents the region where wall e!ects
are absent, b may simply be taken to be that which would
result from random packing in large diameter beds: b = 0:4,
say. It should be measured using a container for the particles
in which D=d is very large, rather than the narrower diameter
bed for which wall e!ects are to be expected.
2.2. The bulk zone ?uid ?ux Ub
This requires a little more unravelling. It would appear
to depend on the 5ow regime. We start with the seemingly
reasonable assumption of Martin (1978) that the wall region
may be considered one-half a particle diameter in thickness,
as illustrated in Fig. 1. In fact, the results presented below are
quite insensitive to this assumption, doubling the wall region
thickness to one particle diameter, for example, makes very
little di!erence to the evaluated Ub over the relevant range
of D=d.
From Fig. 1 it follows that the total 5uid 5ux U divides
between the bulk region and the wall region according to

2
2 


(D=d) 1
(D=d) 1
Uw : (4)
U=
Ub + 1
(D=d)
(D=d)
To proceed further it is convenient to consider the low and
high Reynolds regimes separately.
2.2.1. Low Reynolds number regime
For low Reynolds numbers the pressure loss in both the
wall and the bulk regions may be expressed as follows:
?P = ab Ub = aw Uw :

(5)

The %rst of the two expressions for the pressure loss in

Eq. (5), ab Ub , corresponds exactly to the %rst (viscous) term
of the Ergun equation, Eqs. (1) and (2), the second, aw Uw ,
merely expresses the fact that, in the viscous regime, pressure drop will be proportional to 5uid velocity.
From Eq. (5) we may write:
Uw
ab
=
(6)
Kv =
Ub
aw
which may now be combined with Eq. (4) to give the
required expression for Ub in terms of the unknown
constant Kv
U
Ub =
(D=d)1 2
2
[1 ( (D=d) ) ]Kv + ( (D=d)1
(D=d) )
Viscous regime:

Fig. 1. The simple model: 5uid 5ow distribution for wall e!ects in a
packed bed.

(7)

2.2.2. High Reynolds number regime

For high Reynolds numbers the pressure loss in both the
wall and the bulk regions will be proportional to the square
of the corresponding 5uid 5ux in the region
?P = b2b Ub2 = b2w Uw2 ;

(8)

R. Di Felice, L.G. Gibilaro / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3037 3040

3039

where the %rst of these two expressions for the pressure loss,
b2b Ub2 , corresponds exactly to the second (inertial) term of
the Ergun equation. As before, we may write
Ki =

Uw
bb
= ;
Ub
bw

(9)

leading to an expression for Ub in the inertial regime having

exactly the same form as Eq. (7)
Ub =

U
[1

2
( (D=d)1
(D=d) ) ]Ki

2
+ ( (D=d)1
(D=d) )

Inertial regime:

(10)

2.3. The pressure loss as a function of D=d

As the wall and bulk region parameters (aw ; bw ; ab ; bb )
are independent of D=d, so too are the parameters Kv and
Ki in Eqs. (7) and (10). Kv and Ki depend only on the 5ow
regime and there is no reason at all to expect them to be
the same. However, the experiments of Cairns and Prausnitz (1959), performed over a Reynolds number range of
52000, yield the unexpected results of no discernible dependence of these parameters on Reynolds number. This
conclusion is in agreement with the experimental %ndings
of Stephenson and Stewart (1986) for operations on beds
packed with cylinders over a Reynolds number range from
37 to 280. It also agrees qualitatively with more recent measurements in packed bed systems in which no signi%cant
variations in local 5ow distributions were observed over
Reynolds number ranges of up to two orders of magnitude in
the intermediate 5ow regime (Bey and Eigenberger, 1997;
Giese et al., 1998; Johns et al., 2000). The experiments of
Cairns and Prausnitz were performed for a D=d ratio of 15
and the key results, which follow from an examination of
Fig. 2 of that paper, are shown in Fig. 2 and summarised by
Ub
0:88 0:03;
U

regardless of the 5ow regime:

(11)

As discussed above, these results are independent of D=d,

thereby enabling the constants Kv and Ki to be evaluated
from Eqs. (7) and (10), respectively:
Kv = Ki = 2:06:

(12)

On this basis Eq. (7) becomes identical to Eq. (10) and may
be used to evaluate the bulk zone 5ux Ub from the total 5ux
U as a function solely of the bed/particle diameter ratio D=d
under all 5ow conditions
Ub =

U
2
2:06 1:06( (D=d)1
(D=d) )

Fig. 2. The experimental results of Cairns and Prausnitz (1959) for Ub =U

as a function of Reynolds number.

(13)

Ub , together with b ( b =0:4, say), enables the pressure loss

?P to be obtained as a function of D=d from the standard
Ergun relation, Eq. (1). These predictions for ?P are shown
in Fig. 3, for the viscous and inertial 5ow regimes,

Fig. 3. Pressure loss in %xed beds: comparison of model predictions

(continuous curves) with the reported results of various investigators
(points). The data of Chu and Ng (1989) are plotted as elaborated by
Tsotsas and SchlOunder (1990). (See also Mehta and Hawley (1969);
Coulson (1935); Leva (1947); Reichelt (1972); Foumeny et al. (1993);
Oman and Watson (1944); Di Felice (2002))

expressed relative to ?Ph the Ergun predictions based on

the assumption of a fully homogeneous bed. These reference
values have been obtained by making use of the average
5uid 5ux U and the empirical expression of Zou and Yu
(1995) for the average bed void fraction as a function of
D=d


 
10:686
1 ; b = 0:4:
= b + 0:01 exp
(14)
(D=d)
Also shown in Fig. 3 are the experimental results of various
workers obtained for the viscous and inertial 5ow regimes.

3040

R. Di Felice, L.G. Gibilaro / Chemical Engineering Science 59 (2004) 3037 3040

3. Conclusions

Acknowledgements

It will be seen that the unusual trend of pressure loss

relative to that estimated on the basis of a homogeneous
bedi.e. increasing with increasing of wall e!ects in the
viscous 5ow regime and decreasing with increasing wall
e!ects in the inertial 5ow regimeis well captured by the
simple model, which also yields quantitative results in good
accord with the available data for the viscous regime. In spite
of its extreme simplicity, it appears to be the %rst model able
to fully accommodate this unusual pattern of behaviour. Its
application could not be more simple, involving as it does
the application of the standard Ergun relation, Eqs. (1) and
(2), to the bulk region of the bed in which the void fraction b
represents that which would be obtained in a large diameter
bed ( b 0:4 for random packed spheres) and the 5uid 5ux
Ub is obtained as a function of D=d from the average value
U by means of Eq. (13). It therefore circumvents problems
of uncertainties with regard to conditions in the wall region,
which other approaches to this problem have tended to focus
on (see, for example, Mehta and Hawley, 1969; Winterberg
and Tsotsas, 2000).

The %nancial support of the Ministero dellIstruzione,

dellUniversita e della Ricerca (MIUR) under their PRIN
2003 research programme is gratefully acknowledged.

Notation
a
A
b
d
D
K
L
P
Q
U
W

de%ned by Eq. (2), kg s=m4

bed cross-sectional area, m2
de%ned by Eq. (2), kg0:5 s=m2:5
particle diameter, m
column diameter, m
de%ned by Eqs. (7) and (10)
bed height, m
pressure, N=m2
volumetric 5ow rate, m3 =s
5uid 5ux, m/s
mass of particles, kg

Greek letters



p

void fraction
5uid viscosity, N s=m2
5uid density, kg=m3
particle density, kg=m3

Subscripts
b
w
i
v

bulk region
wall region
inertial regime
viscous regime

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