Abstract
Multitubular reactors are commonly used in industry for processes involving highly exothermic chemical reactions. This reactor type consists of individual tubes, with a small diameter compared to the particle size. These slender beds facilitate heat management, but also give rise to flow maldistribution, which decreases the reactor efficiency. The aim of this article is to validate particle-resolved simulations using Magnetic Resonance Imaging experiments while focusing on the flow maldistribution. The packing structure used in the simulations is reconstructed from the experimental images to facilitate a one-to-one comparison. A good match between experiments and simulations is found for the averaged flow profile, probability density function of the velocity in axial direction and even the local velocity distributions. However, a correction of the experimental results for magnetic susceptibility artifacts is necessary to obtain a similar match in the probability density functions and the local profiles.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e18322 |
| Number of pages | 13 |
| Journal | AIChE Journal |
| Volume | 70 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| Early online date | 3 Jan 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - May 2024 |
Funding
This work is part of the research program TOP Grants Chemical Sciences with project number 716.018.001 which is financed by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and is supported by the Netherlands Center for Multiscale Catalytic Energy Conversion (MCEC), an NWO Gravitation program funded by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of the government of the Netherlands.
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| Netherlands Center for Multiscale Catalytic Energy Conversion | |
| Ministerie van Onderwijs, Cultuur en Wetenschap | |
| Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek |
Keywords
- hydrodynamics
- immersed boundary method
- magnetic resonance imaging
- particle-resolved computational fluid dynamics
- slender packed beds