DETERMINATION OF THE DIFUSIVITY AND THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY OF A GRANULAR ADSORPTIVE BED IN THE PRESENCE OF GASES

David Domingos Soares da Silva¹; Lucilho José de Lima Junior¹; Herbert Melo Vieira¹; José Mauricio Alves de Matos Gurgel¹; Luiz Simão de Andrade Filho¹; Ana Lyvia Tabosa da Silva¹

¹ UFPB

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-0400

Resumo

Adsorbed Natural Gas (ANG) is a very attractive fuel for its cleaner combustion, which may potentially reduce mainly CO2 and is a very attractive fuel to replace Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in mobile storage applications such as in vehicles. The use of activated carbon have made possible to storage the same amount of gas contained in CNG tanks, although at a much lower pressure. Thermal behavior analysis of such devices indicated that their performance is significantly sensitive to heat transfer rates inside sorbent beds. The measurement of activated carbon packed bed thermal properties has been achieved making use of a cylindrical apparatus designed to conduct experiments under stead state conditions, at different gases' pressures and with carbon content. Bauer-Schlünder model was applied in order to identify the thermal conductivity of activated carbon pellets, which was obtained from bed conductivity measurements in the presence of the two gases. Thermal conductivity behavior of packed activated carbon beds with methane and natural gas content has been investigated.

Palavras-chave: Thermal conductivity; Thermal diffusivity; Adsorption; activated carbon