A three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer model for methanol synthesis in a modular millireactor
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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2022-08-31
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Mcode
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Language
en
Pages
12
Series
Chemical Engineering Science, Volume 258, pp. 1-12
Abstract
In this work, a modular millireactor (MMR) is designed and modeled using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool OpenFOAM. First, the method is validated against a conventional packed bed reactor (PBR) model (1D) with Aspen Plus. Next, the method is applied to study the effects of pressure (2–6 MPa) and temperature (483–533 K) on the performance of the MMR. Conjugate heat transfer (CHT) CFD results for the MMR are compared against a corresponding PBR at isothermal conditions. For the MMR, the methanol yield is shown to vary between 9–23 % within the studied parameter range. Overall, the MMR outperforms the PBR at conditions studied in this work. The maximum difference in methanol yield between MMR and the PBR is noted to be a factor of 1.71 at 533 K and 5 MPa. Such a large discrepancy advocates the usage of 3D CHT/CFD.Description
Funding Information: The authors acknowledge the Academy of Finland for the support of this research through Grant Nos. 318024, 332835, 333069, and profiling funding 5 for Energy Storage with Grant No. 326346. Business Finland is acknowledged for the main financial support (grant 8797/31/2019) of the P2XEnable project (p2xenable.fi). The project partners are also thanked for their financial contributions. The authors are grateful for the use of the computer facilities within the Aalto University School of Science ”Science-IT” project. The authors wish to acknowledge CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland, for computational resources. We thank Pavel Maksimov for fruitful discussions during the preparation of the manuscript. Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Authors
Keywords
Aspen Plus, CO hydrogenation, Methanol synthesis, Modular millireactor, OpenFOAM
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Citation
Izbassarov, D, Nyári, J, Laitinen, A, Laari, A, Santasalo-Aarnio, A & Vuorinen, V 2022, 'A three-dimensional conjugate heat transfer model for methanol synthesis in a modular millireactor', Chemical Engineering Science, vol. 258, 117765, pp. 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ces.2022.117765