Steady State Model for Heat Transfer in a Packed Bed Reactor of Elliptic Cylindrical Shape

摘要

The fixed-bed reactors of circular cylindrical geometry with heated or coolednwalls are frequently used to carry out heterogeneous reactions of solid-gas typenin engineering applications. The design of a fixed bed reactor requires an extensivenknowledge of heat transfer characteristics within the packed bed. In thisnsense, this work presents a three-dimensional mathematical model to predict thenheat transfer inside a fixed bed elliptical cylinder heat exchanger. The modelnconsiders uniform velocity and temperature profiles of the fluid phase at the entrancenof the reactor, and constant thermo-physical properties. The surface of thenequipment convective boundary condition is assumed to be constant. The energynequation, written in the elliptical cylindrical coordinates, was discretized usingna finite-volume method considering a fully implicit formulation, and WUDS interpolationnscheme. Numerical results of the dimensionless temperature profilesninside the packed bed reactor at a steady state are presented and temperature distributionnis interpreted. To validate the model, numerical results obtained for thencircular cylinder are compared with analytical results from literature and a goodnagreement was obtained.