Porous Reactor with Injection Needle

The reactor consists of a tubular structure with an injection tube that has its main axis perpendicular to the axis of the reactor. The incoming species in the main and injection tubes reacts in a fixed porous catalyst bed. The model couples the free fluid and porous media flow through the Navier-Stokes equations and Brinkman’s extension of Darcy’s law. The mass transport for the three species is modeled with the convection-diffusion equation.

The figure shows the iso-concentration surfaces of species A which is introduced in the main channel of the reactor. This species is consumed in the porous bed and the reaction distribution at the inlet of the bed is shown in a cross-section plot. The reaction is not uniformly distributed in the catalytic bed and has its maximum close to the radial position of the injection pipe. The low concentration of A at the injection point is due to dilution by the solvent that carries species B.

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