Group14

Design of Fluid Flow Model for a Porous Material Bed Using Gas Cell Prototype

This student team will work to characterize and predict fluid flow through a bed of porous particles. Understanding fluid flow through porous media is essential to nanomaterial design and synthesis through chemical vapor deposition, gas separation, and catalysis. Previous work between UW and Group14 has resulted in the development of a prototype device with initial proof of principle. Our goal for this project is to refine that prototype design, test variables of interest including particle size distribution, porosity, bed density, and bed depth, then use those results to design an empirical model for predicting behavior of future materials. The design parameters of this project include optimizing a gas flow cell design for a preferred range of material properties and designing a basic model for predicting the relationship between gas flow (e.g. pressure drop across the bed) and those material properties. The scope entails using that apparatus to study and predict inert gas flow through different materials, particle size distributions, porosity, bed densities, and bed depths by controlling process conditions such as gas flow rate, temperature, and pressure. The performance will be judged by the operational range of the optimized apparatus and the predictive power of the model compared to test data such as maximum bed depth allowable for a defined pressure drop. Desired outcome would be the optimization of a test apparatus and designing an empirical model of the scoped process variables to predict pressure drop across a bed of material.