CFD Method To Couple Three-Dimensional Transport and Reaction inside Catalyst Particles to the Fixed Bed Flow Field

A new method is presented to couple the fluid flow in a fixed bed to the transport and reaction inside a catalyst particle, using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The particle is modeled as solid, allowing no-slip surface flow boundary conditions to be used. Species transport inside the particle is represented by user-defined scalars, and the catalytic reactions are represented by user-defined functions. The new method is validated using standard cases for which exact results are known. Previous work has used a porous representation of the catalyst particle, which results in inaccurate temperature and species profiles due to an artifact of convective flux across the particle−fluid interface. This also gives incorrect values of the particle-to-fluid heat transfer coefficient, compared to standard correlations. Simulation results are presented for methane steam reforming using spherical particles in a wall segment, under tube inlet and midtube conditions, to illustrate the solid particle method.