MODELING AND SIMULATION OF CATALYTIC REVERSE FLOW REACTOR

Abstract

Polluted air can be decontaminated from volatile organic compounds by making use of catalytic oxidation in packed bed. Recently studies have exhibited that it can be profitable to apply an unsteady state process. A reverse flow reactor is an adiabatic packed bed reactor, which is forced to operate under transient conditions by reversing the direction of the feed flow periodically. The behavior of an adiabatic packed bed reactor with periodic flow reversal has been studied by means of modal calculations. By applying mass and heat balance heterogeneous model has been developed. The main advantage of applying this system for air purification process is an auto thermal process possible with low, concentration of the contaminants in inlet and enables the reactor to handle fluctuations in inlet conditions like gas flow rate and concentration. The reactor could be operated auto thermally provided that the inlet concentrations were sufficiently high. If a mixture of contaminant is fed to the reactor is low then it might be necessary to increase total hydrocarbon concentration to assure an auto thermal process.