COMPREHENSIVE DYNAMIC MODELLING AND CFD SIMULATION OF HEAT AND MASS TRANSFER IN WETTED WALL ABSORPTION REACTORS

A comprehensive mathematical model has been developed to analyze transport phenomena in wetted wall absorption reactors. In this regard, a wetted wall reactor was modelled considering the entrance regions of momentum, heat and mass transfer, compressibility of the gas phase as a function of gas temperature, pressure, and composition, and also non-Newtonian behaviour of the liquid phase. In the developed model, a gas mixture of two components, A and B, was considered as the gas phase (A as the diffusing component), while a binary liquid mixture of components C and D was taken as the liquid phase (C as the reactant component). CFD methods were applied to solve nonlinear governing equations simultaneously and the simulation results were validated against experimental data reported in the literature and excellent agreement was found. Moreover, distributions of velocity, temperature, and species concentrations of both phases were obtained and the effects of various operating conditions and physicochemical properties on these distributions were carefully studied. Furthermore, the open-loop response of the reactor to some typical step and pulse inputs was examined. Moreover, the closed-loop response of the reactor was also examined; in this regard, a PI controller was designed to control the reactor's output properly.