Aerodynamic CFD simulations of experimental and industrial thermal flow reversal reactors

Abstract

The paper presents a simplified CFD model suitable for simulating a Thermal Flow Reversal Reactor (TFRR) aerodynamics. This model may be used for an analysis of flow phenomena in a pilot reactor which is planned to be implemented for Ventilation Air Methane (VAM) combustion in a hard coal mine. Moreover, the model was to be used to compare the designed versions of geometries from the point of view of expected pressure drop of future plant, and also uniformity of flow velocity in the cross-section of the ceramic monolith packing.The ANSYS FLUENT simulations presented in the paper were divided into the two following stages:(a)Development of a simulation method allowing to couple simplified CFD simulations with results of separately performed calculations applying a dynamic model based on spatially one-dimensional partial differential equations of the dynamic mass and energy balances with own thermal combustion kinetics. The aerodynamic model was verified by comparing CFD simulation results with the experimental records taken from the research and demonstration (R&D) plant (cf. Section 2.2). The simulations revealed acceptable accordance with experimental results what shows that the model may be useful in practice. This stage was aimed to get reliability of further, forecasted results for an industrial plant in a larger size scale.(b)CFD simulations for currently designed larger pilot industrial flow reversal reactor with use the flow resistance coefficients obtained and verified during simulations of the much smaller experimental reactor aerodynamic model, referred to in the Section 3.1.