Thermal Characterization of a Chemical Reactor Coupling COMSOL and ModeFrontier

N. Pacheco[1], D. Pavone[1], K. Surla[1], E. Schaer[2], and J. Houzelot[2]
[1]IFP-Lyon, France
[2]LRGP-ENSIC, France
Published in 2010

For Hydrogen production purpose from bio-ethanol, IFP set up a pilot reactor that can work at high temperature (1000°C) and high pressure (20 bar). Experiments show that this reactor has a specific thermal behavior that should be modeled in addition to chemical and hydrodynamics to understand and optimize hydrogen production. The multiphysics simulator has been defined in COMSOL and the thermal behavior has been matched on specific thermal experiments designed for the purpose. Thermal parameters that characterize the reactor has been estimated coupling modeFrontier to the reactor simulator. Efficient parameter estimations could be obtained using genetic algorithms leading to an accurate thermal simulator. We present the simulator and the way it has been linked with the optimizer.

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