Modeling strategies for sensible heat thermal energy recovery through packed beds

A considerable amount of industrial heat is wasted to the atmosphere. This valuable energy could be recovered through fixed bed systems by sensible or latent heat. Mathematical modeling and experimental study of a fixed bed thermal energy recovery system by sensible heat are presented in this paper. An experimental setup was constructed in which air and water were utilized as the charging and discharging process heat transfer fluids, respectively. Three different materials including silica-ceramic, alumina-ceramic, and metal with different sizes were used as the energy storage material. Mathematical modeling was performed at three different levels to analyze the system behavior. The difference among the various modeling levels was in their simplifying assumptions. The resulting equations in each level of modeling were numerically solved. Validation of the modeling results against the experimental data was performed to evaluate the capability of the developed models in prediction of the system actual behavior. Level I model with an average error of 24 % in the charging process and 11 % in discharging process showed unsuitable results, while level II and level III models showed approximately the same and acceptable results with 5 % and 9 % average errors in charging and discharging processes, respectively. Then level II model was selected for prediction of the system performance due to its less complexity compared to level III model. Finally, the influence of the packings material, packing size, and inlet air velocity and temperature on the system performance was predicted using level II model. The system yield had the highest value for all packings at the entering air highest temperature and lowest superficial velocity examined. Metal packings showed better performance and had an experimental system yield of 54 % and 67 % at the entering air highest temperature and lowest superficial velocity, respectively. It was also observed that metal packings outperformed other packings and had the highest experimental yield of 58 % at the same operating conditions. Besides, the highest experimental yield of 61 % was achieved by packings with the smallest size (13 mm) at the highest entering air temperature (140 °C). Based on the findings of this study it can be concluded that lower inlet air velocity and higher inlet air temperature enhanced the recovery efficiency. Besides, the smaller metal packings size showed higher recovery efficiency.