Moderate-pressure conversion of H-2 and CO2 to methanol via adsorption enhanced hydrogenation

Abstract

The performance of different tubular reactor designs for methanol synthesis was investigated by using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and experiments. The validated model was used to investigate the effect of various reactor geometries, coolant temperature, feed temperature, inlet composition, and flow rate on the methanol yield and heat transfer performance. New designs using metal inserts were proposed with an aim to improve the methanol yield by simple retrofitting. It was observed that the metal inserts can be utilized to relocate the catalyst close to the cooling surface, and as a result, near isothermal operating condition was achieved in both tube-cooled and tubular rea..