Azadeh Mirvakili

On the presumption that an axial-radial flow pattern (AR) can contribute to a more even distribution of fresh syngas over the catalyst bed, in this study, effects of AR pattern in a mega methanol plate reactor are studied, and the corresponding results are compared with that of fully axial (APR) or radial (RPR) ones. For this purpose, a two-dimensional mathematical model is developed for the AR, while this is one-dimensional for APR and RPR.Afterward, partial differential equations are solved with orthogonal collocation of finite elements method, and the modeling results are compared with industrial data, indicating a good agreement. Besides, the AR reactor is optimized (OAR) using differential evolution(DE) method in order to maximize methanol production. Results demonstrate that the AR can promote methanol production up to 6 and 3% relative to the APR and RPR, respectively. Moreover, in the OAR, 2% and 14?C increase in the feed flow rate and temperature,correspondingly, results in 3.5% improvement in the methanol production.