Design and Testing of Fluid Flow Through a Porous Particulate Bed

The student team will characterize fluid flow through a bed of porous particulate materials. Fluid flow has profound impacts upon many chemical processes important to nanofabrication such as filtration efficacy, chemical vapor deposition homogeneity, and catalyst utilization. The goal for the team is to develop a method and prototype apparatus for measuring pressure differentials across a bed of particles and test a variety of porosities, particle size distributions, bed depths and packing densities, and develop empirical trends for each variable. This project is relevant to both Materials Science and Chemical Engineering departments as it characterizes a material with different structures and processing conditions to understand a performance of a key property. The project parameters would involve both the experimental apparatus design and fabrication as well as the testing of various material and processing conditions. Performance will be judged on the ability to specify different conditions and materials in terms of pressure drop and the ability of the students to determine a basic empirical model / determine a maximum bed depth for a given allowable pressure drop and particle properties. The scope of the project is limited to examining effects on particle size distribution, particle porosity, particle packing and bed depth. This project allows students to engage in experimental apparatus design, method design, and data modeling which is applicable to future work in a wide variety of industries / careers as material science or chemical engineers. Desired outcome is the transfer of a test apparatus and an empirical model of the scoped process variables and pressure drop across a bed of material.

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