Cooling of particulate solids and fluid in a moving bed heat exchanger

The current technical brief is to analytically solve the coupled energy equations governing the thermal phenomenon of particulate solids and cooling fluid present inside moving bed heat exchangers constructed via a parallel plate system. The prime concern is to analytically evaluate the cooling effects of a heat sink (absorbent) placed within the media on the particulate and fluid and hence to obtain the relevant temperature fields for the latter. In the absence of such a source term, the solutions collapse onto the recent literature. Results clearly demonstrate how an effective cooling can be achieved with a heat sink mounted on industrial moving bed heat exchangers. Particularly, the existence of an energy sink results in cooler solid particles as compared to the flowing fluid.