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A new method for reconstruction of the structure of micro-packed beds of spherical particles from desktop X-ray microtomography images. Part A. Initial structure generation and porosity determination

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Vladimir Zivkovic

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND).


Abstract

Micro-packed beds (µPBs) are seeing increasing use in the process intensification context (e.g. micro-reactors), in separation and purification, particularly in the pharmaceutical and bio-products sectors, and in analytical chemistry. The structure of the stationary phase and of the void space it defines in such columns is of interest because it strongly influences performance. However, instrumental limitations – in particular the limited resolution of various imaging techniques relative to the particle and void space dimensions – have impeded experimental study of the structure of µPBs. We report here a new method that obviates this issue when the µPBs are composed of particles that may be approximated by monodisperse spheres. It achieves this by identifying in successive cross-sectional images of the bed the approximate centre and diameter of the particle cross-sections, replacing them with circles, and then assembling them to form the particles by identifying correlations between the successive images. Two important novel aspects of the method proposed here are it does not require specification of a threshold for binarizing the images, and it preserves the underlying spherical geometry of the packing. The new method is demonstrated through its application to a packing of a near-monodispersed 30.5 mm particles of high sphericity within a 200 mm square cross-section column imaged using a machine capable of 2.28 mm resolution. The porosity obtained was, within statistical uncertainty, the same as that determined via a direct method whilst use of a commonly used automatic thresholding technique yielded a result that was nearly 10% adrift, well beyond the experimental uncertainty. Extension of the method to packings of spherical particles that are less monodisperse or of different regular shapes (e.g. ellipsoids) is also discussed.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Kashani MN, Zivkovic V, Elekaei H, Biggs MJ

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Chemical Engineering Science

Year: 2016

Volume: 146

Pages: 337-345

Print publication date: 02/06/2016

Online publication date: 02/03/2016

Acceptance date: 24/02/2016

Date deposited: 02/03/2016

ISSN (print): 0009-2509

ISSN (electronic): 1873-4405

Publisher: Elsevier

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ces.2016.02.031

DOI: 10.1016/j.ces.2016.02.031


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