CFD simulation of catalytic naphtha reforming process

For the first time, computational fluid dynamics technique is applied to dynamically simulate catalytic reforming rectors on industrial scale. Transport phenomena for momentum, heat, mass and turbulence are simultaneously solved through the domain of fluid. Additionally, heat transfer equation is solved for solid-state regions. Twenty-four irreversible reactions involving four pseudo-components in the feedstock, namely aromatics, naphthenes, paraffins and coke, are considered to occur into the catalytic beds. All reactions are treated as Arrhenius type when acting as stiff class of ordinary differential equation in their solution procedure. Coke formation is taken into account for the first time with two pressure-dependent reactions. The kinetic scheme is obtained from numerous experiments established on the pilot plant and its parameters are adjusted to the plant data. Results show good agreement between simulation and plant data so that maximum relative error reached for research octane number is less than 2 per cent