Effects of Pt/Al 2 O 3 Catalyst Load on Upgrading of Pyrolytic Bio - oil by Hydrodeoxygenation in a Fixed Bed Reactor

This study deals with the numerical modelling and simulations of catalytic upgrading of bio - oil in a fixed bed reactor using Pt/Al 2 O 3 catalyst (of load 20 g – 100 g) in the range of weight hourly space velocity (WHSV = 1 h - 1 – 2 h - 1 ), temperature (T = 623 K – 673 K) and pressure (P = 10443 kPa – 13889 kPa). The model equations of complex multiphase turbulent flow combined with a lumped kinetic model are solved using a computational fluid dynamics based commercial solver, ANSYS Fluent 14.5.In the solver, Gidaspow and Schillar - Naumann models for drag relations in order to account for the interactions between fluid and solid phases respectively are adopted. Similarly, Ranz - Marshall mod el and Gunn model are adopted for treating the fluid - fluid and fluid - solid heat interactions respectively. The reactions kinetics used in the solver are the lumped kinetic model on the basis of an experimental study available in the literature. Thoroughly validated model is used to produce new results on hydrodynamics of various phases in the reactor, volume and mass fractions of lumped components and yields of desired components over wide range of pertinent operating conditions. Some results indicate that the maximum yields of desired alkanes and aromatics are obtained at a catalyst load of 60g when WHSV = 1h - 1 , P = 13889 kPa and T = 673 K.