Articles techniques et présentations

A packed bed reactor consisting of spherical catalyst particles in a tube was simulated numerically. The steady-state pseudo-heterogeneous model consisted of a pseudo-continuum representation for the heat and mass transfer in the reactor tube. The reaction source terms were evaluated by explicitly solving a 1D spherical pellet model at each discretization point. The model implemented in COMSOL uses 2 geometries. The test case of carbon monoxide conversion gave satisfactory results when compared to the literature, giving similar profiles but slightly higher values for temperatures and concentrations. The steam reforming case is currently being solved. Results are expected to match simulations done independently using 3D CFD.