Significance of axial heat conduction in non-isothermal adsorption process in a desiccant packed bed

Numerical simulation of heat and moisture interactions between air stream and the particles in a desiccant bed provide useful insight on the dynamics of the bed and performance characteristics. Current study introduces a mathematical model for the heat and moisture transfer in desiccant packed bed based on solid side resistance (SSR) model that will now consider heat conduction along the bed. Adsorption and desorption experimental tests have been carried out for validating both solid side resistance (SSR) and solid side resistance with axial heat conduction (SSR-AC) models. The models have been used to investigate the influence of various design parameters like air velocity, particle diameter, bed length and the number of units of mass transfer, on the significance of axial heat conduction. It has been found that increasing the particle diameter or increasing air flow velocity or decreasing the bed length will reduce the influence of axial heat conduction in the bed. Moreover, it has been found that the difference in the bed performance evaluated due to the absence of axial heat conduction in the bed is notably decreasing with the decrease in the number of transfer units of heat or mass. From this study, it is recommended to consider the axial heat conduction term when number of transfer units of mass and heat are greater than unity.