| Pressure swing adsorption technology with the benefits of simple process, high reliability, low energy consumption and environmental protection has been widely used in industrial fields. The initial distribution of the inlet gas plays an important role for the separation performance of the adsorption tower, tower’s operational stability and product gas quality after the process of tower.The computational fluid dynamics method was used in this paper to numerically simulate the porous orifice plate gas distributor, which exists in the common application of engineering. Building the physical model, selecting the grid method, exploring the numerical simulation process and choosing the post-processing focus were combined with the experimental verification to determine a feasible and reliable simulation method. Operating conditions, structure parameters of the gas distributor, installation positions of distributor and other factors affecting the performance of the distribution were studied. Two quantitative factors of the pressure drop ΔP and inhomogeneity of gas distribution M were used for the comparative analysis of the numerical simulation results. Distributions of the speed, velocity difference, pressure and turbulent kinetic energy and turbulent energy bulk rate in different sections were combined with the comparative analysis to conclude the influence rule of various assessment factors. Results indicated that the inclination angles of the distributor orifice and distances between the regions of porous media and distributor had the biggest effect on the performance of gas distributor at a fixed inlet velocity. When the orifice inclination angle was-20°~10°or distance between the distributor and porous zone was over478mm, the distributor had a good performance.Based on the rules and issues from the numerical analysis, three gas distributors with novel structures were proposed and the distributor performance was also studied. It turned out that the uniformity of gas distribution was improved significantly and the pressure drop was reduced obviously. And the inversion arc plate distributor could not only effectively reduce the whirlpool area, but also significantly improve the fluid uniform effects.Research results of this paper can provide a theoretical basis and reference value for improving the performance of gas distributor in absorption tower, rational structure designs of gas distributor and applications in the pressure swing adsorption system. |
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