Simulation of a Transpiring Wall Reactor for Supercritical Water Oxidation: Characteristics of Water Film

Abstract

Reactor corrosion and plugging problems severely hinder commercial application of supercritical water oxidation. A transpiring wall reactor can overcome these two problems by forming a protective water film on the inner surface of a porous transpiring wall to isolate corrosive substances and inorganic salt. This work proposed water film coverage rate and inorganic salt concentration in water film as evaluation indexes of water film characteristics. A computational fluid dynamics model of a new transpiring wall reactor was built to explore the characteristics of water film under key operating parameter conditions by numerical simulation together with experiment validations. The results show that water film coverage rate raised either with transpiration intensity and transpiration water temperature increasing or with feedstock flow rate and feedstock preheating temperature decreasing. Inorganic salt concentration in water film declined as transpiration intensity and transpiration length increased. Two equat...