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Numerical modeling and simulation of chemical reaction effect on mass transfer through a fixed bed of particles

We studied the effect of a first order irreversible chemical reaction on mass transfer for two-phase flow systems in which the continuous phase is a fluid and the dispersed phase consists in catalystspherical particles. The reactive solute is transported by the fluid flow and penetrates through the particle surface by diffusion. The chemical reaction takes place within the bulk of the particle. Wehandle the problem by coupling mass balance equations for internal-external transfer with two boundary conditions: continuity of concentration and mass flux at the particle surface. We start with the case of a single isolated sphere. We propose a model to predict mass transfer coefficient (`reactive' Sherwood number) accounting for the external convection-diffusion along with internal diffusion-reaction. We validate the model through comparison with fully resolved Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) performed by means of a boundary-fitted mesh method. For the simulation of multi-particle systems, we implemented a Sharp Interface Method to handle strong concentration gradients. We validate the implementation of the method thoroughly thanks to comparison with existing analytical solutions in case of diffusion, diffusion-reaction and by comparison with previously established correlations for convection-diffusion mass transfer. In case of convectiondiffusion- reaction, we validate the method and we evaluate its accuracy through comparisons with single particle simulations based on the boundary-fitted method. Later, we study the problem of three aligned-interacting spheres with internal chemical reaction. We propose a `reactive' Sherwood number model based on a known non-reactive prediction of mass transfer for each sphere. We validate the model by comparison with direct numerical simulations for a wide range of dimensionless parameters. Then, we study the configuration of a fixed bed of catalyst particles. We model the cup-mixing concentration profile, accounting for chemical reaction within the bed, and the mean surface and volume concentration profiles of the particles. We introduce a model for `reactive' Sherwood number that accounts for the solid volume fraction, in addition to the aforementioned effects. We compare the model to numerical simulations to evaluate its limitations

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:univ-toulouse.fr/oai:oatao.univ-toulouse.fr:24311
Date19 October 2018
CreatorsSulaiman, Mostafa
ContributorsInstitut National Polytechnique de Toulouse - INPT (FRANCE)
Source SetsUniversité de Toulouse
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis, NonPeerReviewed
Formatapplication/pdf
Rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Relationhttp://oatao.univ-toulouse.fr/24311/

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