Determination of effective thermal conductivity of adsorbent bed using measured temperature profiles

In this paper a numerical method to determine the effective thermal conductivity of a moist granular zeolite bed from measured unsteady temperature profiles is presented. The problem is formulated as a minimization problem in which the heat transfer equation appears as a constraint. The heat transfer equation was discretized using the standard Crank-Nicolson method with non-equal spatial increments. The minimization is carried out using the modified Gauss-Newton method with a standard program package. Tests of the accuracy of the method compared with calculated values are shown. Also comparisons with the thermal conductivity of a mineral wool sheet obtained from measurements in the steady state are described. Some results from measurements with the pari zeolite 13X/methanol are given