Modeling and Simulation of Partial Oxidation of Methanol to Formaldehyde on FeO/MoO3 Catalyst in a Catalytic Fixed Bed Reactor

A two-dimensional mathematical model was developed for a porous heterogeneous catalytic fixed bed reactor. The model took into account the effect of heat generated by adsorption of reactants on the catalyst surface and heat transfer from the fluid phase to the surroundings which have a significant effect on reactor performance, especially at reactor hotspot. The developed model predicted the partial oxidation of methanol to formaldehyde on FeO/MoO3 catalyst, a complex reaction system. Excellent agreement was achieved when the resultant simulated results were compared with experimental data in the literature. The proposed model predicted the location of the hotspot at a dimensionless distance of 0.4413 (= 0.0309 m) the same as the experiment value but with a temperature of 619 K compared with an experimental value of 622 K. The conventional heterogeneous and pseudo-homogeneous models predicted the hotspot temperature to be about 8 K and 34 K lower than the experimental value respectively.