Author(s)

Yixuan Yin,Zuoguo Yang

Corresponding Author

Zuoguo Yang

Abstract

Trickle bed reactor (TBR)’s liquid-solid mass transfer and liquid outflow’s tracer concentration curves were simulated by coupling internal mass transfer data, external diffusion model and macro TBR computational fluid dynamic (CFD) model. The predicted Peclet (Pe) numbers and liquid outflow’s tracer concentration curves were fitting well with the experiment results. Simulation results show that the mean relative deviation of the predicated Pe value is less than 8 %. Higher liquid flow rate leads to a steeper concentration curve and early breakthrough. While the effects of gas flow rate on outflow tracer concentration curves are not obvious. Tracer concentration contours indicate that there was a uniform flow distribution in TBR when the liquid flow rate was high.

Keywords

Trickle-bed reactor, multiphase flow, mass transfer, CFD simulation.