3.2.2. Comparison of predictions and measurements
We combined our model with the clogging model described in
Section 3.2.1 and compared our predicted results for the pressures
with those measured at the inlet of the capsules 1–5, 7–10 and at
the outlet of the top and bottom capsule, both for the co-current
and counter-current configuration. In order to assess the quality
of our predictions, we plot for a given throughput the maximum
absolute error, that is, the maximum absolute error between any
of the predicted and measured pressures and the mean error. This
is defined as the mean over all absolute errors between the
predicted and measured pressures and is very similar to the
median error.
The results of the simulation for the counter-current configuration
are depicted in Fig. 4. The predicted pressure rises gradually
at the beginning before rising rapidly towards the end. The model
accurately predicts the measured pressures; the spikes in the
error measurements are due to the spikes in the clogging data
(Fig. 3a).
The results for the co-current configuration (Fig. 5) show a
similar gradual rise at the beginning before the rapid rise at the
end; the maximum and mean error for the predictions are better
than those for the counter-current configuration.