Approximate expressions for second-order reaction effectiveness factors in trickle-bed reactors

✍ Scribed by Ching-Chih Lai; Chung-Sung Tan

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 765 KB
• Volume: 46
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0009-2509
• DOI: 10.1016/0009-2509(91)80017-s

✦ Synopsis

The effectiveness factors for a second-order reaction kinetics for two wetted geometries, polar wetted and uniformly wetted, in a trickle-bed reactor were investigated. The numerical solutions obtained by using the orthogonal collocation method indicated that a large difference in effectiveness factors for these two wetted geometries may occur in some ranges of parameters. The effect of the volatility of the liquid reactant on the effectiveness factor was also observed. In order to avoid complicated numerical calculations, approximate models were developed. For the polar wetted geometry, the weighting-factor model was found to render satisfactory results for a volatile liquid reactant and the modified Thiele modulus model for a nonvolatile liquid reactant. For the uniformly wetted geometry, because of the relative simplicity of the boundary conditions, the approximate model using the asymptotic solutions at small and large Thiele moduli derived in a similar way as for the polar wetted case provides satisfactory results.