A Numerical Study on the Influence of Confining Walls on Drag and Heat Transfer Coefficients in Single-Particle Lab-Scale Reactors

Single-particle reactors in lab-scale are a promising technology to gain an in-depth understanding of the intricate reaction
and transport processes that occur in catalyst particles under operando conditions. It is not described whether the effect of
the bounding walls in such narrow flow channels influence the processes at the particle. Therefore, this work applies three-
dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations to analyze the drag coefficient C$_D$ alongside the local
and average particle Nusselt number Nu$_p$ as characteristic local and integral quantities in the range of particle Reynolds
numbers 10 ≤ Re$_p$ ≤ 10$^3$ . An equation is derived to correct for the wall effects on C$_D$ and Nu$_p$ and assist the experimenter
in the interpretation of measured results