PRODUCTION OF ETHYLENE OXIDE WITH SILVER PELLETS CATALYST
Using Computational Fluid dynamics method to design and optimise chemical reaction of pellets catalyst
A few details
Project Description
In this study, a local US company wants to design and optimise ethylene oxide (C2H4O) production with silver (AG) catalyst in the form of pellets. This process is quite complicated, involving many sequences of surface chemical reactions and transport phenomena from the flow. The process is exothermic and at some temperature combustion can occurs, hence proper calculation of the process must be done to prevent this.
How we solved it
Our approach
The best method to solve this problem is by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Using CFD, we can easily model the detailed flow pattern and do numerous trials and errors to find the best configurations of pellets, size, flow, and concentration of the species.
In this project, openFOAM CFD is used with catalyticFOAM solver to solve the surface catalytic reaction combined with standard openFOAM fluid solver (pimplefoam). To model the detailed reaction, reduced kinematics modelling is used for ethylene oxide with silver catalyst.
