Packed Bed Reactor

Application ID: 238


One of the most common reactors in the chemical industry, for use in heterogeneous catalytic processes, is the packed bed reactor. This type of reactor is used both in synthesis as well as in effluent treatment and catalytic combustion.

The reactor consists in essence of a container filled with catalyst particles. These particles can be contained within a supporting structure, like tubes or channels, or they can be packed in one single compartment in the reactor.

This application presents an approach for studying coupled macro- and microscale mass balances in reactors packed with catalyst. The model requires two geometries, one for each system scale, to compute the concentration profiles of the reacting species along the packed bed reactor as well as within catalyst pellets.

This model example illustrates applications of this type that would nominally be built using the following products: