A critical review of dispersion in packed beds

The phenomenon of dispersion (transverse and longitudinal) in packed beds is summarized and reviewed for a great deal of information from the literature. Dispersion plays an important part, for example, in contaminant transport in ground water flows, in miscible displacement of oil and gas and in reactant and product transport in packed bed reactors. There are several variables that must be considered, in the analysis of dispersion in packed beds, like the length of the packed column, viscosity and density of the fluid, ratio of column diameter to particle diameter, ratio of column length to particle diameter, particle size distribution, particle shape, effect of fluid velocity and effect of temperature (or Schmidt number). Empirical correlations are presented for the prediction of the dispersion coefficients (D (T) and D (L)) over the entire range of practical values of Sc and Pe(m), and works on transverse and longitudinal dispersion of non-Newtonian fluids in packed beds are also considered.