Hydrodynamic Characteristics of an Internal Recycle Berty Catalytic Reactor in Batch/Continuous or Packed/Fluidized Bed Modes

Berty-type internal recycle reactors offer great opportunities for screening catalysts and reproducing catalytic reacting conditions in multiple processes, thus approaching industrial reactions while amplifying kinetic information. However, the rational design of these reactors requires a deeper understanding of their governing hydrodynamics and equations so that they can be better utilized in batch or continuous mode or as packed or fluidized beds. In this work, by adopting a slice model to represent a three-dimensional symmetric geometry with porous zone settings for catalyst beds, coupled with a species transport model, multiple reference frame, and SST k–ω turbulence model, we developed a computational fluid dynamic simulation strategy of a commercial Berty reactor manufactured by Integrated Lab Solutions (ILS). We conducted experiments to validate the proposed modeling approach under continuous packed bed operations, through which the hydrodynamic behaviors with packed/fluidized beds under the batch mode were also investigated by studying the influences of the transient injection, bed porosities, and rotation rates. As a result, we reported a set of equations to assess the bed velocity and contact time under different porosities, which simplified the performance improvements while replacing the need to perform complex simulations or conduct costly experiments. On the grounds of these hydrodynamic simulations and under various operating conditions, we discussed the pertinence of these instruments for intrinsic kinetic measurements in the batch/continuous or packed/fluidized bed operational modes.