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Everything You Wanted to Know about Chemical Reactor Engineering and CFD

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Chemical Reactor CFD

Chemical Reactor CFD

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a highly elite group of analysis technique that is used by engineering domain to solve numerical equations related to flow physics quite effectively. It encompasses equations for mass, momentum and energy in flow geometry. In this article, we will look at how CFD can help to understand the different flow physics occurring in chemical reactor engineering.

CFD helps in designing and shrinking the design cycle thereby helping the design process in chemical reactor engineering. CFD has become an inevitable feature for chemical reactor engineering as it helps in appreciating the role of temperature contours and residence time distribution in influencing the product worth. In this application limitation pertaining to computing power and tentative validation of models are both significant.

There are three major equations on which CFD is based:

  • Equations for turbulence modeling in the context of the Reynolds-averaged preparation of the equations of fluid motion
  • Equations describing chemical species distribution in the fluid domain and
  • Equations describing energy pertaining to thermal distribution across the design

These three equations provide useful contribution in understanding different designs in the chemical reactor engineering. There are other factors that could play an important role in complex geometry, which influences fluid flow, chemical kinetics, heat dissipation etc. With computational fluid dynamics (CFD); it is very easy to predict the behavior of the new chemical reactor design from the design stage itself.

In chemical reactor design; CFD modeling can help to enhance the process by improving the residence time, distribution of the species, and mixing.

Proven applications of CFD include:

  • Reactors
  • Thermal Boilers
  • Burners
  • Regenerative Thermal Oxidizer (RTO), etc; related to chemical reactor engineering

CFD has a vast potential to help in understanding the different flow physics of chemical reactor engineering.

May be you like to read more about : Typical Steps of CFD Simulation Process

Mehul Patel

About Author: Mehul Patel specializes in handling CFD projects for Automobile, Aerospace, Oil and Gas and building HVAC sectors. He works as a CFD consultant with Hi-Tech CFD for the past 5 years and has successfully executed numerous CFD projects of high complexities. He is an expert in turbo-machinery, gas dynamics, Combustion, Fluid Dynamics, multiphase flow analysis, computational fluid dynamics etc.