Understanding of Laminar Flow Field in a Packed-Bed with and without a Static Mixer by Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

  • Miss Thanarak Srisurat, Department of Chemical Engineering, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand., Thailand
  • A/Prof Dr Phavanee Narataruksa, Department of Chemical Engineering, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand., Thailand
  • Dr Karn Pana-Suppamassadu, Department of Chemical Engineering, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand., Thailand
  • Dr Sabaithip Tungkamani, Department of Industrial Chemistry, King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand., Thailand
  • AssocProf Siriluck Nivitchanyong, Research and Development Section, National Metal and Materials Technology Center, Pathumthani, Thailand., Thailand

    • The aim of this work was to characterize hydrodynamics and heat transfer in a tubular reactor containing static mixer by using Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD). Commercial software: COMSOL MULTIPHYSICSTM Version 3.3 was used to generate flow field of gaseous reactants, i.e. CO(g) and H2(g) for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. A tubular reactor was a single tube with 1.1 cm inside diameter and 34 cm long. The Static mixer was inserted inside the tubular reactor. The number of elements was 24 with 0.8 cm in diameter and 28.8 cm long. Annular volume between the static mixer and the tubular reactor was packed with catalyst. Incompressible Navier-Stokes was used to model the flow of gaseous reactants inside the reactor at steady state condition in which the inlet Reynolds Number (Re) was varied in the range of 0.5-8 and Mach Number (M) between 1.5×10-6 - 3×10-5. The results have shown that with the insertion of static mixer, the gaseous reactants were easily diverted from the central line of the tube to the catalytic wall. This helps improving the performance of a wall-coated type reactor widely used for heterogeneous catalytic reaction such as reforming and Fischer-Tropsch reactions.