Gas-Liquid Flows Through Porous Media in Microgravity: The International
Space Station Packed Bed Reactor Experiment
Abstract
Experimental results on pressure drop and flow patterns for gas-liquid
flow through packed beds obtained in the International Space Station
with two types of packing are presented and analyzed. It is found that
the pressure drop depends on the packing wettability in the
viscous-capillary (V-C) regime and this dependence is compared with
previously published results developed using short duration low-gravity
aircraft tests. Within the V-C regime, the capillary contribution is the
dominant force contributing to the pressure drop for the wetting case
(glass) versus the viscous contribution dominating for the non-wetting
case (Teflon). Outside of the V-C regime, it is also found that
hysteresis effects that are often strong in normal gravity gas-liquid
flows are greatly diminished in microgravity and pressure drop is nearly
independent of packing wettability. A flow pattern transition map from
bubble to pulse flow is also compared with the earlier aircraft data.