3-D multi-tubular reactor model development for the oxidative dehydrogenation of butene to 1,3-butadiene

Jiyoung Moon, Dela Quarme Gbadago, Sungwon Hwang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

5 Scopus citations

Abstract

The oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH) of butene has been recently developed as a viable alternative for the synthesis of 1,3-butadiene due to its advantages over other conventional methods. Various catalytic reactors for this process have been previously studied, albeit with a focus on lab-scale design. In this study, a multi-tubular reactor model for the butadiene synthesis via ODH of butene was developed using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). For this, the 3D multi-tubular model, which combines complex reaction kinetics with a shell-side coolant fluid over a series of individual reactor tubes, was generated using OpenFOAM®. Then the developed model was validated and analyzed with the experimental results, which gave a maximum error of 7.5%. Finally, parametric studies were conducted to evaluate the effect of thermodynamic conditions (isothermal, non-isothermal and adiabatic), feed temperature, and gas velocity on reactor performance. The results showed the formation of a hotspot at the reactor exit, which necessitates an efficient temperature control at that section of the reactor. It was also found that as the temperature increased, the conversion and yield increased whilst the selectivity decreased. The converse was found for increasing velocities.

Original languageEnglish
Article number46
Pages (from-to)1-21
Number of pages21
JournalChemEngineering
Volume4
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Sep 2020

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

Keywords

  • Butadiene
  • Computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
  • Multi-tubular reactor
  • Multiscale modeling
  • Oxidative dehydrogenation (ODH)
  • Reactor design

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