Thermal management of natural gas production from coke oven gas by optimizing catalyst distribution and operation conditions

In this work, 3D particle-resolved CFD simulations have been performed to investigate the thermal effects of natural gas production from coke oven gas. The catalyst packing structures with uniform, gradient rise and gradient descent distribution and the operating conditions of pressure, wall temperature, inlet temperature and feed velocity are optimized for reduced hot spot temperature. The simulation results show that compared with packing structures with uniform distribution and gradient descent distribution, the gradient rise distribution could effectively reduce the hot spot temperature without affecting the reactor performance in the reactor with upflow reactants feeding, of which the reactor bed temperature rise is 37 K. Under the conditions with the pressure of 20 bar, wall temperature of 500 K, inlet temperature of 593 K, inlet flow rate of 0.04 m/s, the packing structure with gradient rise distribution exhibits the minimum reactor bed temperature rise of 19 K. By optimizing the catalyst distribution and operation conditions, the hot spot temperature of CO methanation process could be dramatically reduced by 49 K at the sacrifice of slightly reduced CO conversion.