Finely resolved numerical simulations of reactive flow in porous media

Conference poster, 2018

A wide variety of scientific and engineering challenges involve flows through porous media. Applications range from flow through natural porous systems, such as petroleum reservoirs, soil and biomass char particles, to flows through artificially created porous systems such as packed beds, fuel cells, foams and membranes. In both natural and artificial systems, the microscale characteristics of the media can often, to different degrees, be controlled to optimize the macroscale performance of the application. The problem is then to find the optimal configuration of the porous system. This works aims to increase the understanding of which design parameters of a packed bed that influence the performance of homo-and heterogeneous reactions inside the bed.The flow, temperature and concentration fields in representative microstructures of various packed bed configurations are fully resolved in numerical simulations employing the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM), where homo-and heterogeneous chemistry is simultaneously accounted for.

Detailed information about the flow structures, permeability and flow paths through the system is retrieved and correlated to the conversion and selectivity of the chemical reactions in the system. The dependence of a reactive porous system on different packing parameters, such as particle shape, spacing, and packing inhomogeneities is elucidated, and the implications for achieving optimal performance in a variety of different porous media are discussed.