CFD simulation of benzene adsorption on pistachio activated carbon porous media

Abstract

In this work, a combination of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and porous media model was applied to simulate the benzene adsorption on activated carbon and the flow fields in a porous media. The three dimensional unsteady state the gas flow was modeled by using the laminar one phase flow equations in conjunction with the mass transfer equation. The adsorption rate on solid phase was implemented to the model by a user defined source. The model was validated by comparing the simulated breakthrough curves by experimental data. After the validation of the model, the effects of the operating conditions such as benzene concentration, gas flow rate and other parameters on the breakthrough curve and adsorption capacity were studied. The results of CFD model and experiments revealed that the total adsorption time was increased when the gas flow rate and inlet benzene concentration decreased. The results of flow field revealed that increasing the gas flow rate or bed porosity caused the pressure drop decreased.