A fast modeling of chemical reactions in industrial‐scale olefin polymerization fluidized beds using recurrence CFD

Abstract

AbstractWe present a novel approach for the fast modeling of exothermic chemical reactions in industrial‐scale fluidized bed reactors. It implicates a fast olefin polymerization process, accounting for the catalyst activity, the solubility of the reaction gases in polymer, the particles crystallinity, and the reaction masses and heat transfer. We principally apply the transport‐based recurrence computational fluid dynamics (rCFD) model upon the base of a short‐term non‐reactive simulation performed by a coarse‐grained two‐fluid model (cgTFM). Following the captured recurrent flows, the methodology propagates rapidly passive scalars far beyond the recorded simulation. The reaction kinetics of production/consumption rates due to polymerization are locally embedded into the individual solid/gas species concentrations. These in turn are considered in transporting the enthalpy and the generated heat by reaction. By doing so, the significant computational effort required to couple the thermodynamic effects of polymerization with the cgTFM (hybrid model), is drastically reduced using rCFD with very reliable agreement.