Numerical simulation of heat transfer in the near-wall region of tubular reactors packed with metal open-cell foams

• Conjugated heat transfer simulations for air or water flow through aluminium open-cell foams.
• The role of reactor wall-foam support thermal coupling is investigated in detail.
• A novel correlation for the wall heat transfer of metal open-cell foam reactors is presented.

A numerical investigation of the thermal transport processes in the near-wall region of a reactor packed with metal open-cell foams is presented in view of the development of externally-cooled tubular reactors packed with catalytically active foams. Two different aluminium open-cell foams were scanned by X-ray micro-computed tomography in order to generate the 3D models used in this study. The conjugated solid–fluid heat transfer problem is solved by finite volume analysis (FVA) for different flow rates and fluid properties (Peclet number range from 1 to 105). Predictive correlations for the wall heat transfer coefficient are derived according to different thermal coupling scenarios between the open-cell foam bed and the reactor wall. Such kind of systematic study and the proposed correlations that account for the gap size represent a novelty in the field of published literature on open-cell foams.