Estimating radiant fields in flat heterogeneous photoreactors by the six-flux model

Heterogeneous photoreactor modeling is a task complicated by the integro-difterential nature of the Radiation Transfer Equation (RTE) when scattering phenomena are important. In the present work, a novel "Six Flux Model" (SFM) is proposed, which may be regarded as a step forward with respect to the previously proposed "Two Flux Model" (TFM). In order to validate the newly proposed model, Monte Carlo simulations of an indefinite plane-slab photoreactor have been performed. As no simplifying assumptions are involved in this case, the information obtained may be regarded as "pseudo-experimental," and therefore compared with the predictions of both TFM and SFM models. Results show that the novel SFM is able to closely match the exact solution of the RTE better than the TFM, still retaining the TFM advantage of a simple closed-form solution, that is, ease of use, clearer effect of model parameters, and so forth. (c) 2006 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 52: 3882-3890, 2006.