Cfd Simulation of Particle-to-fluid Heat Transfer under Supercritical Conditions: Preliminary Results

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has proven to be a powerful tool to numerically solve the fluid-flow equations so it gives a further insight into the flow pattern of contacting equipment. There has been a fast growing in the study of applications in fluid flow and heat transfer, and several authors have used it to analyze flow patterns in fixed-bed equipment and to predict heat transfer parameters in studied cases. In this work, particle-to-fluid heat transfer is studied in a maximum-occupying-space arrangement of solid spheres in a cylindrical container, in order to simulate via CFD the heat transfer behavior in a supercritical catalytic reactor under steady state conditions. Supercritical CO2 was chosen as circulating fluid; buoyancy terms were found to be relevant in calculations through a dimensionless analysis done to Navier-Stokes equations, and therefore are used during simulations. C-written programmed modules based on the SRK equation of state and accepted correlations for high pressure properties estimation have been implemented for use with CFD commercial codes in order to estimate the transport properties of the fluid (i.e., density, viscosity, heat capacity and thermal conductivity).