(251d) Numerical Analysis on Pressure Drop of Distributor in Catalytic Fixed Reactor

In the chemical process, to control a pressure drop is important part in the process. Especially, chimney distributor type largely affects pressure drop and pressure pulsation in the catalytic fixed reactor. So we implement case study according to distributor type. In the case study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model is developed to predict the numerical value of pressure drop in each chimney distributor. In this work, pressure drop is predicted through k-epsilon simulation in the Fluent model. The simulation results can determine whether a venturi inserts or not.

Original distributor, the computational domain was meshed with 382,744 tetrahedric elements and 74,284 mesh nodes. Venturi distributor, it was meshed with 487,148 tetrahedric elements and 94,239 mesh nodes.

The pressure drop of the original distributor is about 41 pascal, but at the venturi inserted distributor, â?³P is about 2037 pascal. The air-inlet velocity is about 0.377m/s, and oil-inlet velocity is about 0.879m/s. The highest pressure area in chimney is oil-inlet zone. Even though venturi nozzle is inserted to chimney, the mixing effect that has a capability to mix gas with oil through venturi isnâ??t expected.

The numerical value of pressure drop in two types of chimney distributor is analyzed by the Computational Fluent Dynamics (CFD). For general purpose, original chimney distributor is recommended because the pressure drop is much smaller than venturi inserted distributor. However if mixing effect existed, we have to calculate newly to compare benefit by low pressure drop with benefit by chemical reaction undergone mixing effect.