CFD MODELING AND SIMULATION OF A COUNTERCURRENT REACTOR OF HIDROTREATMENT PROCESS WITH JATROPHA CURCAS L. VEGETABLE OIL

In this work, a microscale countercurrent reactor was analyzed and simulated in CFD, and the results were compared with a drained bed reactor (TBR) which is held in the CMP+L research center. The importance of this study is to find the mathematical model of the countercurrent reactor to produce clean fuels from Jatropha Curcas L. vegetable oil and in the future scale it to an industrial level. For the hydrotreatment process, a commercial CoMo/γ-Al2O3 catalyst was used, and Jatropha Curcas L vegetable oil was used as raw material. The operating conditions that were considered for the CFD simulation were temperature 380 °C, pressure 8 MPag, LHSV 8.0 h−1. The reactor model considers a reaction mechanism 13 hydrocracking reactions of triglycerides towards renewable fuels. The CFD simulation was carried out in Fluent 18.2 in a transient state and in 3 dimensions, considering the standard k-ϵ turbulence model, the Eulerian multiphase model and the porous medium model, obtaining results very similar to the experimental ones, with a conversion of triglycerides of 0.996% and the retention time of the liquid temperature was 169 seconds and in the simulation is 200 seconds, the molar concentration profiles of the products were obtained whereby this model can be applied to the industrial scale.