Dynamics of multicomponent mass transport with complex reaction in a porous catalyst Original Research Article

Numerical simulations of the water-gas shift reaction over an industrial catalyst ICI 52-1 were performed. The analysis of the system was focused on the mutual influence of intraparticle mass transport and catalytic reaction. Responses of the WK cell on step changes of an inlet stream composition were modelled. The amount of information being important for reliable comparison of experiments and simulations was evaluated for several responses on the concentration step changes. The advantage of the WK cell in comparison with flow reactors was discussed in terms of sensitivities of system responses with respect to inlet stream parameters. The asymmetric feeding of reactants when the WK cell worked similarly like a membrane reactor was considered as most suitable. The related system of parabolic partial differential equations was solved by the method-of-lines integration technique with a fully adaptive time and space grid control.