Simulating simultaneous fines deposition under catalytic hydrodesulfurization in hydrotreating trickle beds—does bed plugging affect HDS performance?

Abstract The deposition of fine particles under chemical reaction conditions in a high pressure/temperature trickle bed reactor was analyzed theoretically using a dynamic multiphase flow deep-bed filtration model coupled with heat and species balance equations in the liquid, gas and solid (catalyst+deposit) phases. The hydrodesulfurization process in the presence of sulfided Co-Mo/ γ - Al 2 O 3 catalyst was considered as a case study. The deep-bed filtration model incorporates the physical effects of porosity and effective specific surface area changes due to fines deposition/detachment, gas and suspension inertial effects, and coupling effects between the filtration parameters and the interfacial momentum exchange force terms. The detachment of the fine particles from the collector surface was assumed to be induced by the colloidal forces in the case of Brownian particles or by the hydrodynamic forces in the case of non-Brownian particles. The three-phase heterogeneous model developed to simulate the trickle bed performance incorporates the concentration gradients inside the catalyst particle and solid deposit. An important finding of the work is that fine particles deposition does not influence appreciably trickle bed reactor performance. Thus, the only undesirable effect of the fine particles deposition process is the bed plugging and the increase of the resistance to two-phase flow.