A concept to simulate an industrial size tube reactor with fast complex kinetics and absorption of two gases on the basis of CFD modeling

The strive for a chemical company to be most competitive requires the technical skill and tools to optimize the operation of a production plant. Therefore, concepts are necessary to meet these needs. One tool applied in this paper is based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) which, however, requires some skill, in particular when combined with fast chemical reactions and absorption processes. Here we apply this tool to the case of a tube reactor for the formation of propylene oxide, a bulk chemical with a growing production capacity. The concept is shown to be quite useful for yield improvements of the precursor component propylene chlorohydrin, and for the optimization of other system parameters like inert gas in feed with respect to yield and selectivity of the key component. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.