Articles techniques et présentations

Nowadays mathematical models are applied in almost every field of our life to predict how real systems behave. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has become a standard tool for analyzing various situations where fluid flow has a significant effect on the studied processes. Complex models can be implemented and solved in commercial CFD packages (e.g. COMSOL Multiphysics). The goal of this paper is to model a catalytic bed based on the model of individual catalyst pellets. The proposed model takes into account the mass, heat and momentum transport as well as the reactions in a catalytic pellet of an industrial fixed-bed tube reactor. Different ways for aggregating pellet models were compared and evaluated applying COMSOL Multiphysics. The catalytic pellet model was exported using MATLAB-COMSOL connection, and the catalytic bed model was implemented and tested using MATLAB.