Analysis of Heat, Mass Transport, and Momentum Transport Effects in Complex Catalyst Shapes for Gas-Phase Heterogeneous Reactions Using COMSOL Multiphysics

A. Nagaraj[1], and P. Mills[2]

[1]Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, TX, USA
[2]Department of Chemical and Natural Gas Engineering, Texas A&M University, Kingsville, TX, USA
Published in 2008

The global demand for sulfuric acid has been forecast to grow at an average of 2.6% per year from 2005 – 2010. The primary objective of this work is to analyze the performance of various heterogeneous catalyst shapes that have been proposed for the oxidation of SO2 to SO3 used in the manufacture of sulfuric acid.

COMSOL Multiphysics provides a powerful numerical platform for simulation of complex catalyst shapes. These models can be readily coupled to global reactor models that allow the performance of pilot and commercial scale adiabatic reactors to be analyzed with a detailed accounting of various complex hydrodynamic effects and transport-kinetics interactions.

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