Moving Bed Heat Exchangers (known as MBHEs) are widely used in industry, on applications involving heat recovery (providing a high volumetric transfer area) and filtering (avoiding common operational problems in fixed bed or ceramic filters like the pressure drop increase during operation).
A roof-shaped protecting screen can be installed above the heat exchanger modules to keep out agglomerates and impurities that cannot pass safely through the tube packages.
[3] Moving bed heat exchangers can be used for cooling or warming of all free-flowing bulk materials which correspond to the requirements of the apparatus, concerning grain size and angle of repose.
The heat exchangers often can be found after rotary kilns and dryers to cool e.g. mineral (quartz sand, Ilmentit, etc.)
[4] A study was conducted on the use of a Moving Bed Heat Exchanger-Filter (MHEF) for removing fine dust particles from gases.
A stable numerical model for filtration and heat exchange was developed that predicts the two dimensional transient response of both solid and fluid phases.
The numerical model incorporates variation in void fraction, velocities and transport coefficient due to combined processes of filtration and heat exchange.