MODELING AND DYNAMICS SIMULATION OF PALM GASOLINE PRODUCTION REACTORS: THE EVALUATION OF FLOW AND TEMPERATURE DISTRIBUTION

• Main Author: Syahrir Isdiawan B., Mochammad
• Format: Theses
• Language: Indonesia
• Subjects: Teknik (Rekayasa, enjinering dan kegiatan berkaitan)
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/64903
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

One indicator of good reactor performance is good flow and temperature distribution. The palm gasoline production reactor belonging to the ITB Catalyst Engineering Center had problem in the form of uneven flow and temperature distribution. As a result, the reactor performance can not meet the expected performance. This study aims to provide recommendations for improving reactor performance through a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) study. The commercial CFD software used is Computational Particle Fluid Dynamics (CPFD) Barracuda Virtual Reactor 21.1.0. This research shows that the CPFD simulation can verify the phenomenon of the pilot scale reactor with an error of 2.7% against the experimental results. This research shows that the heater energy propagation does not reach all catalyst beds. In addition, the flow maldistribution occurs because the ratio of height and bed diameter (L/D) is too small, which is 1.9, and the distance between the bottom bed and outlet is too short, which is 16%-vol. The recommendations given by this study are: [1] increasing the number of tube heaters to 37 ea, [2] narrowing the distance between tube heaters to 1.5x of the tube heater diameter, [3] increasing the L/D catalyst to 5.0, and [4] widen the distance between bottom bed and outlet to 20%-vol. With these recommendations, this research shows that the catalyst temperature can reach >550oC and there is no flow maldistribution >10% between the side near the outlet and the side far from the outlet.