• 한국전산유체공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.49-53
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• 2005

This paper presents a multi-scale hybrid simulation for the design of a catalytic multi-tubular reactor with high performance. The multi-tubular reactor consists of shell and a large number of tubes in which various catalytic chemical reactions occur. To consider fluid dynamics in the shell-side and kinetics in the tube-side at the same time, commercial CFD package and process simulation tool are coupled. This hybrid approach allowed us to predict many kinds of meaningful results such as tube center temperature profile, heat transfer coefficients on the tube wall, temperature rise of cooling medium, pressure drop through shell and tube side, concentration profile of each chemical species along the tube, and so on., and to achieve the optimal reactor design.

• Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering
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• v.35 no.11
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• pp.2157-2163
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• 2018

Catalytic reactors have been essential for chemical engineering process, and different designs of reactors in multi-scales have been previously studied. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) utilized in reactor designs have been gaining interest due to its cost-effective advantage in designing the actual reactors before its construction. In this work, butadiene synthesis via oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of n-butene using tubular reactor was used as a case study in the CFD model. The effects of coolant and reactor diameter were investigated in assessing the reactor performance. Based on the results of the CFD model, the conversion and selectivity were 86.5% and 59.5% respectively in a fixed bed reactor under adiabatic condition. When coolants were used in a tubular reactor, reactor temperature profiles showed that solar salt had lower temperature gradients inside the reactor than the cooling water. Furthermore, higher conversion (90.9%) and selectivity (90.5%) were observed for solar salt as compared to the cooling water (88.4% for conversion and 86.3% for selectivity). Meanwhile, reducing the reactor diameter resulted in smaller temperature gradients with higher conversion and selectivity.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.46 no.5
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• pp.931-937
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• 2008

Rigorous multiscale modelling and simulation of the MTR for WGSR was carried out to accurately predict the behavior of process variables and the reactor performance. The MTR consists of 4 fixed bed tube reactors packed with heterogeneous catalysts, as well as surrounding shell part for the cooling purpose. Considering that fluid flow field and reaction kinetics give a great influence on the reactor performance, employing multiscale methodology encompassing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and process modeling was natural and, in a sense, inevitable conclusion. Inlet and outlet temperature of the reactant fluid at the tube side was $345^{\circ}C$ and $390^{\circ}C$, respectively and the CO conversion at the exit of the tube side with these conditions approached to about 0.89. At the shell side, the inlet and outlet temperature of the cooling fluid, which flows counter-currently to tube flow, was $190^{\circ}C$ and $240^{\circ}C$. From this heat exchange, the energy saving was achieved for the flow at shell side and temperature of the tube side was properly controlled to obtain high CO conversion. The simulation results from this research were accurately comparable to the experimental data from various papers.