Numerical Simulation Of Reactor Coupling Exothermal With Endothermal Catalytic Reactions

Monolithic catalysts, which are uni-body structures composed of interconnected cells or channels, are widely used in environmental applications because of their advantages such as low-pressure drop, high heat and mass transfer rates. They are increasingly used in coupling endo/exothermal reactions, which makes the process more efficient and compact and results in large savings in the operational and capital costs. The search for efficient new reactor concepts for coupling exothermic and endothermic reactions has been intensively studied in the last decade.In this paper, firstly, a novel structured metallic catalyst is introduced which improves mass transfer performance of a monolith reactor for highly exothermic gas/solid reactions. The monolith channels are designed to have metallic substrates that consist of two layers with one of the layers being the metallic support and the other being a foam metal annular that is tightly deposited onto the support surface by some means. Two sets of axisymmetric 2D governing equations are set up for the bulk gas phase and the porous solid phase including momentum, heat and mass balance equations and solved by...