Advanced Reactor Modeling and Simulation

The need for an increased understanding and effort focusing on mathematical methods for solving reactor models is stressed. The submitted program proposal is for 4 years, but we foresee that this is the start of a long-term program that will continuously provide know-how and expertise to develop reactor modelling and numerical solutions steadily further. For increased physical understanding, and to facilitate optimization of chemical processes, computational fluid dynamics is presently believed to be a mo st viable tool and is also an area of great future potential. In the suggested program mathematical methods will be further developed for improved computation schemes of reactive flows. Also, the understanding of the chemical reactor processes might ease the optimization of the whole process plants and lead to more efficient utilization of raw materials and energy. Apart from the practical implications there are also substantial academic promises in the suggested incentive. The project group proposes to graduate 4 PhDs and 1 Post doc. The total budget is 9 219 KNOK over the four-year period 2007-2011. 4 PhD projects are planned: (1) Transient Heterogeneous Fixed Bed Reactor Simulations of the Sorption Enhanced Steam Reforming Process with Maxwell-Stef an Diffusion Closure. (2) Transient Fluidized Bed Reactor Simulations of the Sorption Enhanced Steam Reforming Process. (3) Large Eddy Simulation of a Multiphase Stirred Tank Reactor for Polymerization Processes. (4) Numerical Simulation of a Slurry Bubb le Column Reactor for the Ficher Tropsch Process. 1 Post doc: Development of a dynamic multifluid-population balance model Another aim is to strengthen the links between fundamental and applied research: The work in this project will be managed and perf ormed in strong interaction with the other NFR GassMaks projects at the Department of Chemical Engineering at NTNU, especially the link between the theoretical and experimental projets will be ensured.