Modeling and Experimental Verification of a Corrugated Plate Photocatalytic Reactor Using CFD

PASSALIA, C.; ALFANO, O.M.; BRANDI, R.J.

INDUSTRIAL & ENGINEERING CHEMICAL RESEARCH

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

Lugar: Washington; Año: 2011 vol. 50 p. 9077 - 9086

0888-5885

Heterogeneous photocatalysis is a suitable technology for eliminating indoor pollutants at low concentration ranges. In this work we deal with the modeling and experimental evaluation of a continuous, single-pass, corrugated plate photocatalytic reactor for elimination of gaseous formaldehyde in air. The reactor configuration consists of a corrugated stainless steel plate coated with titanium dioxide catalyst, irradiated from both sides with UV lamps. The complete modeling of the reactor was achieved by means of a commercial CFD tool. Nonetheless, the radiative transfer within the reactor was modeled externally, considering the lamps emission and the radiative interaction between reactor windows and catalytic walls by the computation of view factors. The reaction kinetics was also imposed externally from previous determined parameters. The conditions of the experimental runs were replicated in the computational simulations. Model predictions of the formaldehyde overall conversion showed good agreement with experiments, with a root-mean-square error less than 4%.