May 1, 2015
Journal Article

3-D Model of a Radial Flow Sub-Watt Methanol Fuel Processor

Abstract

A 3-D model is presented for a novel sub-watt packed bed reactor. The reactor uses an annular inlet flow combined with a radial flow packed bed reactor. The baseline reactor is compared to a reactor with multiple outlets and a reactor with 3 internal fins. Increasing the outlets from 1 to 4 did improve the flow distribution, but did not increase the performance in the simulation. However, inserting fins allowed a decrease in temperature with same inlet flow of approximately 35K. Or the inlet flow rate could be increased by a factor of 2.8x while maintaining >99% conversion.

Revised: July 25, 2016 | Published: May 1, 2015

Citation

Holladay J.D., and Y. Wang. 2015. 3-D Model of a Radial Flow Sub-Watt Methanol Fuel Processor. Chemical Engineering Science 135. PNNL-SA-105139. doi:10.1016/j.ces.2015.02.012