CFD plus DoE optimization of a flat plate photocatalytic reactor applied to NOx abatement

This paper illustrates the optimization of a flat plate photocatalytic reactor through a computational framework coupling CFD, taking into account the radiation field modeling, and design of experiments (DoE). The CFD-based DoE approach was used to analyze the influence of the reactor's height (H) and inlet velocity (v(x,in)) on the NO conversion (X-NO), the integral rate of consumption and the pressure drop with Box-Cox power transformation (Delta P--(0.1)5). Results showed that X-NO increases when decreasing H and v(x,in). A critical point of maximum was observed for the integral rate of NO consumption. However, the pressure drop decreases with the increase of H. Additionally, an optimization strategy based on the desirability function approach was used to optimize the process, and the optimum values were H = 7.78 mm and v(x,in) = 68 mm.s(-1). The values predicted by the metamodel and the CFD code showed promising results for this methodology.