Heat transport in open-cell foams: CFD analysis of artificial heat
sources vs. fully resolved exothermal reactions
Abstract
Catalytic structured foam reactors show promising characteristics for
process intensification such as low pressure drop, high specific surface
area, and remarkable heat transport. Especially for the design of
small-scale dynamically operated reactors the understanding of heat
transport is crucial. With computational fluid dynamics (CFD) we can
thoroughly investigate the thermal field of the coupled gas/solid under
reaction conditions and understand heat transport in structured
reactors. In the past, we mimicked the heat production during exothermal
reactions with uniformly distributed volumetric heat sources in the
solid. Here, we compare thermal fields of such simplifications with
full-model calculations using the strongly exothermal CO oxidation as
model reaction. We find that heat flows of the reaction and of
artificial heat source calculations match well and reliable mean
temperature increases can be computed. This helps to determine heat
removal mechanisms and estimate thermal stress.