Assessing the Performance of Hydrotreating Reactor of Diolefin with Different Inlet Configurations via Computational Fluid Dynamics

Liquid maldistribution is an important parameter in the study of fixed bed reactors (FBRs) as it ensures uniformity in the catalytic reactions. The hydrotreating process in this study used a three-dimensional CFD model comparing six different inlet configurations. The model considers the bed porous structure, hydrodynamics, reaction kinetics, and heat and mass transfer. An industrial reactor was simulated using the commercial Ansys Fluent v19.2 CFD package. This study concluded that the performance of the reactor may increase as the flow uniformity improves, as a result of a better configuration in the inlet zone. This was performed by comparing the most frequently used configurations in the literature, and one ideal case was also studied. The rhomboid configuration showed a better result considering the maldistribution factor. As expected due to its flow uniformity, the diolefin conversion of the reactor has an improvement of 8% in comparison to the spiral configuration. The results presented in this work will be useful to optimize the design of existing and new commercial FBRs as well as their performance.