Determination of thermal radiative properties of packed-bed media containing a mixture of polydispersed particles

Thermal radiative characteristics of packed beds containing a mixture of polydispersed SiO2, ZnO, and C particles are determined numerically by employing the Monte Carlo technique, which is validated with the experimentally measured overall transmittance. A radiative heat transfer model is formulated for a pseudo-continuum multi-component medium of Mie-scattering particles. Good agreement is achieved by incorporating approximate phase functions that reproduce the experimentally observed preference for forward scattering.