L. Vandebeld et Kr. Westerterp, AIR PURIFICATION IN A REVERSE-FLOW REACTOR - MODEL SIMULATIONS VS EXPERIMENTS, AIChE journal, 42(4), 1996, pp. 1139-1148
The behavior of a reverse-flow reactor was studied for the purificatio
n of polluted air by catalytic, combustion. A heterogeneous one-dimens
ional model was extended with a heat balance for the reactor wall. An
overall heat transport term is included to account for the small heat
losses in radial direction. The calculations are compared to experimen
tal data without using fit parameters. The agreement between simulatio
ns and experiments is generally good. Discrepancies can be explained m
ainly by inaccurate kinetic data and experimental uncertainties. At lo
w gas velocities and for small reactor diameters, the one-dimensional
model failed and a two-dimensional model must be developed to improve
the predictive potential.