Modeling the oxidative coupling of methane: Heterogeneous chemistry coupled with 3D flow field simulation

The oxidative coupling of methane (OCM) over titanate perovskite catalyst has been developed by three-dimensional numerical simulations of flow field coupled with heat transfer as well as heterogeneous kinetic model. The reaction was assumed to take place both in the gas phase and on the catalytic surface. Kinetic rate constants were experimentally obtained using a ten step kinetic model. The simulation results agree quite well with the data of OCM experiments, which were used to investigate the effect of temperature on the selectivity and conversion obtained in the methane oxidative coupling process. The conversion of methane linearly increased with temperature and the selectivity of C2 was practically constant in the temperature range of 973–1073 K. The study shows that CFD tools make it possible to implement the heterogeneous kinetic model even for high exothermic reaction such as OCM.