Numerical Simulation of a Thermal Cracking Continuous Reactor

In the last years, environmental pollution caused from gas emissions derived of fossil fuels has been a constant problem, beyond the light oil depletion and increased demand for transportation fuel. In this context, studies have been developed to replace these raw materials for other ones, mainly biomass fuels. A viable alternative way to produce them is through cooking oil thermal cracking. This paper proposes a numerical simulation - via computational fluid dynamics - of a cooking oil thermochemical process in a continuous reactor, using a kinetic model by Meier et al. (2015). Transient and tridimensional flow regime, isothermal temperature conditions and chemical lumps - more precisely four groups: cooking oil (>C18), heavy bioil (C12-C18), light bioil (C4-C11) and biogas (<C4) - are the principal characteristics of the mathematical model. Experimental data were obtained from three different typical temperatures in distinct residence times by Wiggers et al. (2013). The presented technological knowledge is important to create new experiments and equipment, as well as scale-up. The simulation results showed good agreement with the experimental values.