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7969529 
Book/Book Chapter 
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of membrane reactors: simulation of single- and multi-tube palladium membrane reactors for hydrogen recovery from cyclohexane 
Itoh, N; Mimura, K 
2013 
Elsevier Inc. 
Woodhead Publishing Series in Energy 
1 
55 
464-495 
English 
WOS:000324034400014 
A palladium membrane reactor has been applied as a promising chemical hydrogen carrier to recover the hydrogen from cyclohexane. However, it has been found that increasing feed rate resulted in an increasing deviation from the ideal analytical model assuming plug-flow and isothermal conditions. This chapter, therefore, presents a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model development, which takes into account the concentration, temperature and velocity distributions due to mass, heat transfer and flow resistance in the membrane reactor. The model is verified for the dehydrogenation of cyclohexane in a shell-and-tube type palladium membrane reactor, as well as for a multi-tube type.The CFD model clearly shows that large temperature and concentration distributions are formed both in the radial and axial directions. Simulation results with cyclohexane dehydrogenation were in good agreement with the experimental data for the both membrane reactors. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that the multi-tube model developed is applicable for changing the reactor design, for instance the membrane dimension, the length of catalyst-packed layer, and the operation conditions such as temperature, feed rate and pressure. 2013 Woodhead Publishing Limited All rights reserved. 
CFD model; membrane reactor; palladium membrane; single tube; multi-tube; dehydrogenation; hydrogen