Experimental study and CFD simulation of heat transfer in polymerization reactor

The heat transfer performance of 5 L jacketed polymerizer was studied based on the combination of CFD simulation and heat transfer experiments. The liquid-solid coupled steady-state heat transfer model of the polymerizer was established to obtain the temperature distribution of the metal solid and the fluid in the reactor and the jacket. The CFD simulation results were validated by heat transfer experiments, and the maximum relative error of temperature at each test point was within 1%-5%. The convective heat transfer coefficients of the inner and outer walls of the reactor and the total heat transfer coefficients were obtained by simulation, and the empirical formulas of Nu on the reactor side and the jacket side were correlated. The results show that the variance of the fluid temperature distribution in the reactor is always below 0.002 in the three calculation domains. Among them, the temperature gradients in the solid domain and the heat transfer boundary layer are larger, and the thickness of the boundary layer is about 3.8 mm. In the experiment range, the inlet temperature and reaction exothermic have a significant influence on the reactor temperature, followed by the inlet flow rate, and the stirring speed has the weakest influence. The heat transfer coefficient on the jacket side is much smaller than the heat transfer coefficient on the side of the kettle. Increasing the heat transfer coefficient on the jacket side is the key to improving the heat transfer performance. The heat dissipation on the outer surface of the reactor is proportional to the temperature difference between the inside and outside, and the proportional coefficient is about 3.031 W•K-1. © All Right Reserved.