Simulation and experiment of gas-solid flow field in short-contact cyclone reactors

A short-contact cyclone reactor has been designed for the particular case of fluid catalytic cracking. The new type reactor mainly includes two parts: a reaction chamber and a separation chamber. So the cracking reactions and the separations between the products and catalysts could occur respectively and simultaneously. A three dimensional model was used to representing key parts of a laboratory cyclone reactor. The Eulerian-Eulerian computational fluid dynamics model with the kinetic theory of granular flow was adopted to simulate the gas-solid two-phase flow. The particle concentration distribution and pressure drop were measured by a PV-6A particles velocity measure instrument and a U-manometer, respectively. Simulated results show that in the reaction chamber solids can be transformed into a homogeneous dispersed flow, particles' concentration becomes uniform gradually while catalysts flowing down, the concentration is a little higher near the wall because of boundary effect. After the gas-solid flowing into the separation chamber, the gas phase is separated with solids completely. The new reactor has a good contact and separation effect. Simulated results make a reasonable agreement with the experimental findings. (C) 2013 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.