Wall-to-fluid heat transfer in a catalytic reactor at supercritical conditions

Abstract

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) studies can be used for improving the understanding of fluid flow and heat transfer in packed bed systems. The objective of this work was to study the heat effects in packed bed reactor under supercritical conditions using CFD comparing the simulations with empirical correlations. Simulations were done for a geometrical model of packed bed of cylindrical catalysts at high pressure supercritical conditions. The packed bed tube was heat on the walls and fluid mixture of carbon dioxide (CO2), methanol (CH3OH) and triolein (C57H104O6), is flown into the packed bed at 250 bar. The flow field is described by three-dimensional (3D) Navier-Stokes equations coupled with the energy and species governing equations, which are solved by a finite volume code. The heat transfer coefficient is obtained in terms of wall Nusselt number (Nuw) from simulation data and compared against empirical models for different flow rates.