Hydrodynamic model of a microstructured plate reactor
A numerical model of a two-phase flow in a plate microreactor was developed. The model is based on a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach and was constructed with the help of an open-source toolbox OpenFOAM, which utilizes a finite volume method to solve the equations of a fluid motion. A cold flow, i.e. a flow without a reaction and a mass transfer was considered in this study. The model was validated by comparing with experimentally measured hydrodynamic parameters: gas holdup and the interfacial area of gas bubbles inside the existing prototype. Validated model was used to test several proposed plate structures for the next prototype. The structure with the highest gas-liquid interfacial area was was chosen for the construction. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
microreactor cfd interfacial area multiphase flow