Designing Catalytic Radiant Heaters for Fugitive Methane and BTEX Combustion
Naeimeh Jodeiri Naghashkar, PhD student in Chemical Engineering
Supervisor - Dr. R.E.Hayes and Dr. S.Wanke
Hydrocarbon emissions during the production and transmission operations of the oil and gas industry present potential problems. The presence of BTEX compounds which are considered toxic and methane as a strong greenhouse gas needs to be controlled. Catalytic combustion using counter flow diffusive radiant heater is a viable choice for elimination of these compounds in which a concentrated fuel stream is fed to the back of the catalyst pad, while the combustion air diffuses from the front. Catalytic radiant heaters are widely used in the oil and gas industry; however, several issues remain to be settled for their application to streams containing harmful hydrocarbons.
Experimental results of this study include the effects of fuel flow rate on fuel slippage, effects of catalyst activity on destruction efficiency and temperature distributions in the heater. Also a model based on finite element method was developed for solving governing partial differential equations. A volume average Navier-Stokes equation is used to model the flow. |
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