Farzad Mousazadeh^*and Robert F.Mudde

Department of Chemical Engineering, Delft University of Technology,  the Netherlands

(^*e-mail: f.mousazadeh@tudelft.nl)

This paper reports a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study on the thermal performance of a three-phase trickle bed reactor. In the reactor under normal flow condition (without mal-distribution or evaporation), we have mass transfer from gas to liquid, an exothermic reaction in the liquid phase and heat transfer between the phases. We study the performance of a trickle bed reactor under normal flow condition, in the case of local mal-distribution and in the case of evaporation. The results of the 2-D CFD simulations under normal flow condition have been compared with a simple 1-D plug flow model. They are in a good agreement.

We observe hot spots in the trickle bed reactor with a local blockage inside. The results show that the local blockage against flow can cause hot spots due to a weak convection of heat in the blocked region.

For a trickle bed reactor with evaporation the temperature at the outlet of the reactor can decrease predominantly in comparison with a normal condition without evaporation. Evaporation is an endothermic phenomenon and decreases the temperature along the reactor. In addition, it can affect the production rate of desired and undesired species due to the effects on the temperature and volume fraction of the phases. Evaporation plays important role in the investigation of hot spots because of its significant effect on the thermal performance of the reactor.