(353g) Particle-Resolved Packed Bed Reactor Simulation: Advances in Contact Point Treatment

Packed bed reactors are one of the working horses in the chemical and process industry. They are used, amongst others, for highly exothermic or endothermic catalytic reactions like (partial-)oxidation or (dry, steam) reformation of hydrocarbons. These types of reactor are used for several decades, but there is still a lack of understanding and room for improvement of the performance of these reactors. Recent advances in modeling particle-resolved packed beds [1,2,3] allows a detailed insight in the flow, species and temperature distribution as well as into the reactions in the beds. One challenge from the simulation point of view is the treatment of the contact points. The local flattening approach by [1] is an efficient and accurate way to handle this, but in the past it was mainly used for spherical particles.

In this contribution we show how this methodology can be modified to enable the handling of non-spherical particles like cylinders or Raschig-rings, which are more commonly used in industry. The modification lead to a well defined gap and do not affect the process regarding runtime nor accuracy. This will be shown for several industrial relevant particle shapes as well as for a highly complex concave-convex shape.

With this methodology new and more efficient particle shapes can be virtually designed and developed.

1. Eppinger, et al., “DEM-CFD simulations of fixed bed reactors with small tube to particle diameter ratios”, Chem. Eng. J. 166 (1), pp 324-331 (2011)
2. G. D. Wehinger et al., “Detailed numerical simulations of catalytic fixed-bed reactors: Heterogeneous dry reforming of methane”, Chem. Eng. Sci. 122, pp 197-209 (2015)
3. N. Jurtz et al., “Advances in fixed-bed reactor modeling using particle-resolved computational fluid dynamics (CFD)”, Rev. Chem. Eng. 35(2), pp 139-190 (2019)