Numerical Simulation of Coupled Transport and Reaction Process in Catalyst Particle for Carbon Dioxide Methanation
ZHANG Chun1, ZHAO Yunpeng1, LAN Xingying1, GAO Jinsen1, SU Mengjun2, SHI Xiaogang1
1. State Key Laboratory of Heavy Oil Processing, China University of Petroleum (Beijing), Beijing 102249, China;
2. CNOOC Institute of Chemicals & Advanced Materials (Beijing) Company Limited, Beijing 102209, China
Abstract：CO2 methanation has emerged as a promising approach for its green utilization. Understanding the coupled diffusion and reaction mechanism within catalyst particles in this reaction system is important. To address this issue, a comprehensive mathematical model was developed to investigate the CO2 methanation reaction in catalyst particles of various shapes, including sphere, cylinder, trefoil, and butterfly. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were employed to study the impact of catalyst size and reaction conditions on the reaction rate. The findings revealed that the butterfly catalyst exhibited the least limitation in terms of internal diffusion, and its effective factor decreased about 0.5% when the catalyst size increased by 20%. With the increase of inlet velocity, the reactants in contact with the catalyst increased per unit time, the inlet velocity increased by 50%, and the reaction rate increased by 0.7%. The reaction rate increased by more than 40% for every 30 K increase in reaction temperature, but the performance of catalyst decreased with temperature increase. The increase of reaction pressure not only increased the reaction rate, but also increased the catalyst effective factor by 1.2% when the reaction pressure increased by 0.20 MPa. The simulation results have a certain guiding significance for the optimization of catalyst and the improvement of reactant conversion.
ZHANG Chun,ZHAO Yunpeng,LAN Xingying et al. Numerical Simulation of Coupled Transport and Reaction Process in Catalyst Particle for Carbon Dioxide Methanation[J]. Chemical Reaction Engineering and Technology, 2025, 41(5): 567-577.
