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Department of Chemical Engineering Annual Report 2015
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 Acid gas removal with absorption
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Project and MSc student can be involved in all areas of
our work.
CHEMICAL REACTOR RESEARCH
The activity on reactor engineering has been
concentrated in fields directly supporting the design and
development of chemical reactors and reactive
separations. The most important research areas are:
 Mathematical modeling of chemical reactors.
 Multiphase flow modeling.
 Design of novel solution methods and algorithms.
 Experimental analyses of fluid flow, fluid particle
coalescence and breakage, CO2 sorption by
adsorbents and heat- and mass transfer in chemical
reactors.
 Experimental validation of numerical models.
 Analysis and design of reactors for environmentally
friendly chemical processes.
The research in these fields comprises both experimental
and theoretical studies, but emphasis is placed on
modeling, development of numerical methods and in-
house software for multi-phase reactor simulations.
The simplest models considered are normally
implemented in the programming language Matlab,
whereas the computationally demanding models are
implemented in FORTRAN 90 and C++. Application areas
are special chemicals reactors, polymer production,
sorption enhanced steam methane reforming,
conventional synthesis gas and methanol synthesis,
membrane reactors, wood gasification and chemical
looping combustion.
A circulating fluidized bed reactor used for studies of
sorption enhanced steam methane reforming (SE-SMR).
Educationally the main objective of our group is to
educate MSc for the Norwegian industry and to raise the
national scientific competence in our field of research
through PhD studies.
RESEARCH ACTIVITIES
The most important research projects are described in
the following paragraphs. For a more comprehensive
description, see: )
MODELING OF MULTI-PHASE REACTORS
We have for more than 20 years been developing in-
house CFD codes for simulating multiphase flows in
chemical reactors. Lately, our main focus has been put
on developing modules for bubble/droplet break-up and
coalescence within the population balance equation
(PBE) framework.
A cold flow bubble column used for studies of bubble
breakage and coalescence mechanisms.