14 / 2017-04-07 20:15:25

Computational Fluid Dynamics based design of a novel reactor technology for the oxidative coupling of methane

13374,13373,2370

The low natural gas price and the large amounts of shale and natural gas have created a renewed interest in methane as a source of liquid energy carriers or as a raw material for the chemical industry. Oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) is considered as one of the most promising processes for valorizing methane by transforming it to ethene in a single step. However, two key challenges have to be addressed before OCM can be considered as an alternative gas-to-chemical technology, namely the low yields of ethene and what to do with the substantial heat release of the reaction. Both these challenges can be overcome in the reactor technology that is proposed in this work, i.e. the gas-solid vortex reactor (GSVR). Because of the complex flow patterns inside the GSVR, simple 0D/1D reactor models are insufficient to estimate the reactor performance. Hence computational fluid dynamic simulations are necessary to optimize and design the GSVR specifically for OCM. Based on CFD simulations it was found that, for selected operating conditions and reactor design, OCM in the GSVR can be performed quasi-isothermally, and for selected catalysts C2 yields as high as 15 – 20 % can be obtained.