Numerical simulation of particle/monolithic two-stage catalyst bed reactor with beds-interspace distributed dioxygen feeding for oxidative coupling of methane

A three-dimensional geometry model of the particle/monolithic two-stage reactor with beds-interspace distributed dioxygen feeding for oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) was set up. The improved Stansch kinetic model adapting different operating temperatures was established to calculate the OCM reactor performance using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and FLUENT software. The results showed that the calculated values matched well with the experimental values of the conversion of CH4 and the selectivity of products (C2H6, C2H4, CO2, CO) in the OCM reactor. The distributed dioxygen feeding with the percentage of 5-20% based oxygen flow rate of top inlet promoted the OCM reaction in monolithic catalyst bed and led to the conversion of CH4 and the selectivity and yield of C-2 (C2H6 and C2H4) increase obviously. The distributed dioxygen feeding was 15%, the conversion of CH4, the selectivity and the yield of C-2 reached 34.1%, 68.2% and 23.3%, respectively. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.