Permeability and effective thermal conductivity of bisized porous media

In the region of minimum porosity of particulate binary mixtures, heat exchange and permeability were found to be higher than the ones obtained with a mono-size packing built with the same small size particles used in the binary packing. This effect was noticed in the range of the particles size ratio 0.1-1.0. The obtained improvement on thermal performance is related to the increase of effective thermal conductivity (ETC) in the binary packing and to the increase in transversal thermal dispersion due to the porosity decrease and tortuosity increase. Permeability can increase by a factor of two, if the size ratio between small and large spheres of a loose packing stays in the range 0.3-0.5. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.