Experimental Study and 3D CFD Simulation of Different Catalyst Loading Effects on Trickle Bed Reactors Hydrodynamics

Single-phase pressure drop has been studied in a range of flow rates that is of particular interest to trickle bed reactors. Bed is packed with industrial trilobe and cylindrical catalysts with 1mm diameter and 4.2 mm length and 1.6 mm diameter and 3.7 mm length respectively. Particles were packed random close or dense packing (RCP) and random loose packing (RLP). The Bed bulk porosities have been obtained 0.43 and 0.47 for RCP and RLP for trilobe and 0.44 and 0.48 for cylindrical respectively. In this study a CFD model based on Eulerian-Eulerian approach has been developed and User Define Functions are prepared for accurately predict the inter phase momentum exchange and radial porosity distribution on reactor. The two fluid model which developed by Attou & Ferschneider has been used for inter phase momentum exchange in momentum balance equation. An experimental set up is also providing for validation of CFD results. The CFD results had very good agreement with experimental data of this work for trickle bed reactor. Also it is shown that the pressure drop of dense loading is bigger than loose packing. It is found that the trilobe catalyst has generally higher pressure drop than cylindrical catalyst because of more tortuosity.