CFD Prediction of Hydrodynamics in High-Pressure Trickle Bed Reactor

Most commercial trickle-bed reactors (TBRs) normally operate at high pressures. This study presents the Initial development of a comprehensive CFD based model to predict pressure drop and liquid saturation in TBRs under high pressure. A two-phase Eulerian CFD model envisaging the flow domain as porous region for evaluating these hydrodynamic parameters even for high pressure operations, has been proposed. Evaluation of model predictions have been carried out with reported experimental data, collected under varied set of operating conditions. All the comparisons lead to the favorable implementation this less computationally intensive, yet first-principle based CFD model to forecast the two-phase pressure drop and liquid saturation for TBRs operating at high pressures.