Volume 3, Issue 4, August 2013, Pages 1045–1052
Hanen NOURI1 and Abdelmottaleb Ouederni2
1 Laboratory of Engineering Process and Industrial System (LR GPSI), National School of Engineers of Gabes (ENIG), University of Gabes (UG), Omar Ibn Elkhattab Street, 6029 Gabes, Tunisia
2 Laboratory of Engineering Process and Industrial System (LR GPSI), National School of Engineers of Gabes (ENIG), University of Gabes (UG), Omar Ibn Elkhattab Street, 6029 Gabes, Tunisia
Original language: English
Copyright © 2013 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The conversion of sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide is a reaction which interests not only the industry of sulfuric acid production but also the processes of pollution control of certain gas effluents containing SO2. This exothermic reaction needs a very good control of temperature, that's why it is led in the industry in a multistage converter with intermediate heat exchangers. Microreactors represent a good alternative for such reaction due to their intensification of mass and heat transfer and enhancement of temperature control. In this study, this reaction was conducted in a stainless steel tubular (4mm ID) packed bed reactor using particles of vanadium pentoxide as catalyst at atmospheric pressure. Experiments were performed with different inlet SO2 concentration in 3-9% range and reaction temperature between 685-833K. We noticed that the conversion decreases with the amount of SO2 and increases with the temperature until an optimum, above this value the conversion drop according to the shape of the equilibrium curve. Controlling rate mechanism is studied by varying temperature. Pseudohomogeneous perfect plug flow is used to describe this small tubular reactor. Numerical simulations with MATLAB were performed to validate the experimental results. Good agreement between the model predictions and the experimental results is achieved. Fluid flow description inside the packed bed reactor was performed by using the free fluid and porous media flow model. This model was solved by the commercial software COMSOL Multiphysics. Velocity profile inside the reactor is theoretically obtained.
Author Keywords: Sulfur dioxide, Pentoxide vanadium, Catalysis, Kinetic model, Heterogeneous reactor, Hydrodynamic simulation.
Hanen NOURI1 and Abdelmottaleb Ouederni2
1 Laboratory of Engineering Process and Industrial System (LR GPSI), National School of Engineers of Gabes (ENIG), University of Gabes (UG), Omar Ibn Elkhattab Street, 6029 Gabes, Tunisia
2 Laboratory of Engineering Process and Industrial System (LR GPSI), National School of Engineers of Gabes (ENIG), University of Gabes (UG), Omar Ibn Elkhattab Street, 6029 Gabes, Tunisia
Original language: English
Copyright © 2013 ISSR Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
The conversion of sulfur dioxide into sulfur trioxide is a reaction which interests not only the industry of sulfuric acid production but also the processes of pollution control of certain gas effluents containing SO2. This exothermic reaction needs a very good control of temperature, that's why it is led in the industry in a multistage converter with intermediate heat exchangers. Microreactors represent a good alternative for such reaction due to their intensification of mass and heat transfer and enhancement of temperature control. In this study, this reaction was conducted in a stainless steel tubular (4mm ID) packed bed reactor using particles of vanadium pentoxide as catalyst at atmospheric pressure. Experiments were performed with different inlet SO2 concentration in 3-9% range and reaction temperature between 685-833K. We noticed that the conversion decreases with the amount of SO2 and increases with the temperature until an optimum, above this value the conversion drop according to the shape of the equilibrium curve. Controlling rate mechanism is studied by varying temperature. Pseudohomogeneous perfect plug flow is used to describe this small tubular reactor. Numerical simulations with MATLAB were performed to validate the experimental results. Good agreement between the model predictions and the experimental results is achieved. Fluid flow description inside the packed bed reactor was performed by using the free fluid and porous media flow model. This model was solved by the commercial software COMSOL Multiphysics. Velocity profile inside the reactor is theoretically obtained.
Author Keywords: Sulfur dioxide, Pentoxide vanadium, Catalysis, Kinetic model, Heterogeneous reactor, Hydrodynamic simulation.
How to Cite this Article
Hanen NOURI and Abdelmottaleb Ouederni, “Experimental and modeling study of sulfur dioxide oxidation in packed-bed tubular reactor,” International Journal of Innovation and Applied Studies, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 1045–1052, August 2013.
