Fluid dynamic simulation of O₃ decomposition in a bubbling fluidized bed

Abstract

Abstract Recent advances in dense, multiphase, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) have allowed accurate simulation of the gas and particle motion in bubbling and circulating fluidized beds. Since fluidized‐bed reactors are used for many chemical processes, a simulation must also be able to accurately couple chemical reactions to bed hydrodynamics. The catalytic decomposition of ozone (O 3 ) often has been used to study experimentally the contacting behavior of catalytic reactors. Simulations of laboratory‐scale experiments of premixed O 3 decomposition in a bubbling fluidized bed using the multiphase CFD code MFIX were conducted. The grid‐independent results are in very good agreement with reported experimental data on total conversion over a range of fluidization velocities and initial bed heights. This confirms the ability of multiphase hydrodynamic models to capture quantitatively the effect of hydrodynamics on chemical reactions in a bubbling fluidized bed.