Heat Transfer in Fixed Bed Elliptic Cylindrical Reactor via Two-Phase Model

Abstract

The study of heat transfer in fixed bed tubular reactors of heated or cooled walls has presented great interest by the academy and industry. The adequate and safe design of such equipment requires the use of reliable and realistic mathematical. Unfortunately several studies are restrict to homogeneous model applied to circular and elliptic cylindrical reactors. Then, the objective of this work was to predict heat transfer in packed-bed elliptic cylindrical reactor, by using a proposed heterogeneous model. The mathematical model is composed for one solid phase and another fluid phase, in which the balance equation for each constituent is applied separately. The finite volume method was utilized to solve the partial differential equations using the WUDS scheme for interpolation of the convective and diffusive terms, and the fully implicit formulation. Results of the temperature distribution of the fluid and solid phases along the reactor are presented and analyzed. It was verified that the highest temperature gradients of the phases are located close to the wall and inlet of the reactor.