Pressure drops of single/two-phase flows through porous beds with multi-sizes spheres and sands particles

Highlights: • Flow tests are performed in packed porous beds with multi-size spheres and sands. • Packed beds with similar size distributions have the similar effective particle diameters. • Reed model predicts well the pressure drop of two-phase flow through porous bed. - Abstract: This paper reports an experimental research of single and two-phase gas/liquid flow in packed porous beds composed of multi-sizes spheres and irregular particles. A test facility named DEBECO-LT is designed and constructed to investigate the friction laws of adiabatic single and two-phase flows in a porous bed. The results show that the effective diameter of multi-sizes non-spherical or irregular particles bed can be derived on the basis of bed consisted of spheres as long as they have a wide range of grain sizes and the similar size distribution. Given the effective particle diameter obtained from single-phase flow through the packed bed with multi-size spheres or irregular particles, the pressure drop of two-phase flow through the bed can be predicted by the Reed model. The experimental data provide insights for the flow characteristic of porous bed, as well as high-quality data for validation of the coolability analysis models and codes