Reactors
General - In the field of process engineering, reactors are used in a wide range of applications. Corresponding to that, the chemical and/or biological processes going on in these reactors vary very much. Beside this, they are often combined with mechanical and/or thermal processes.
Given that the CFD methods are based on the modelling of physical behaviour extendible by chemical, biological and biochemical processes, they provide flexible tools which might be customised for specific reactors.They allow to analyse the influence of design parameters and boundary conditions on the spatial and temporal varying processes occuring in the reactors. Moreover, reactors can be characterised with regard to mixing behaviour, residence times or response functions following defined changes of inflow parameters (e.g. Dirac impuls of chemical species).
As results of the simulation runs, performed transient or steady-state, the design of the apparatus can be improved in detail, process parameters can be optimised and the automatic control behaviour can be determined.