Structure of packed bed probed by Micro-Computed Tomography and Collision Guided Packing

Packed beds used in trickle bed reactors for deep hydroprocessing exhibit complex internal structures that govern fluid flow, conversion, selectivity, and secondary effects such as catalyst degradation and coking. While extensive research has addressed bed structure and hydrodynamics for spherical and simple cylindrical particles, trilobe-shaped catalyst particles among the most widely used shapes in industrial hydroprocessing remain comparatively undercharacterized, particularly with respect to high-resolution bed structure measurement and particle-resolved packing simulation. In this study, the structure of laboratory-scale packed beds of trilobe-shaped catalyst particles is investigated through experimentation and modeling under two different packing methods: central pipe loading and vibrated bed packing. Bed structure is measured using Micro-Computed Tomography (Micro-CT) and characterized through appropriate metrics. The bed-packing process is modeled using Collision Guided Packing (CGP), enabling a direct comparison between experimental measurements and simulation predictions of both the packing dynamics and the final bed configuration. This work addresses a specific gap in the literature on trilobe particle bed characterization and provides a rigorous basis for understanding the impact of packing method on bed structure, with direct relevance to deep hydroprocessing applications.