In this research, computational fluid dynamics was applied to model a laboratory reactor for the degumming of crude palm oil (CPO) involving immiscible liquid-liquid mixing and being controlled by mass transfer. The fluid mixing of CPO and phosphoric acid in the reactor was simulated using multiphase mixture model and standard κ-ε turbulence model in steady state mode. The simulation predicts the distributions of the drop diameter, the dispersed-phase relative velocity, the drop Reynolds number and the interfacial area density. The mass transfer coefficient from experimental work is correlated using the model as Sherwood number Shd = 0.02576 Red0.673Sc0.431 with R2 being 0.91. Finally, the volumetric mass transfer coefficient was calculated and compared to the experiment result.
Trickle-bed reactor (TBR) modelling to produce green fuel via hydrocracking of jatropha oil using silica-alumina-supported Ni-W catalysts was performed in this research. The objectives of this study are to obtain a TBR with good heat transfer and the optimum condition for high purities of products. A two-dimensional axisymmetric model with a diameter of 0.1 m and a length of 10 m was used as a representative of the actual TBR system. Heterogeneous phenomenological models were developed considering mass, energy, and momentum transfers. The optimisation was conducted to obtain the highest green fuel purity by varying catalyst particle diameter, inlet gas velocity, feed molar ratio, and inlet temperature. The simulation shows that a TBR with an aspect ratio of 100 has achieved a good heat transfer. The diesel purity reaches 44.22% at 420°C, kerosene purity reaches 21.39% at 500°C, and naphtha purity reaches 25.30% at 500°C. The optimum condition is reached at the catalyst diameter of 1 mm, the inlet gas velocity of 1 cm/s, the feed molar ratio of 105.5, and the inlet temperature at 500°C with the green fuel purity of 69.4%.
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