Heat and mass transfer in monolithic honeycomb catalysts—I.

The body of information presented in this paper is directed to engineers and scientists concerned with control of automobile emissions and exhaust gases from some industrial processes. The differential equations describing heat and mass transfer in a monolithic honeycomb catalyst are developed. Following transport mechanism is considered: convective heat and mass transfer in the holes of the structure, longitudinal thermal conductivity of the honeycomb support and gas-to-solid heat and mass transfer. The magnitudes of governing parameters for monolithic modules in use are discussed. Two methods for the numerical solution of a system of coupled, nonlinear ordinary differential equations with split boundary conditions are proposed. The first method-shooting procedure can be used only for problems with low values of Peclet number. For high values of Peclet number finite-difference approach along with the Newton-Raphson algorithm is suggested. It is shown that two stable steady states exist in certain regions of operation of a particular monolithic structure. The all-metal monolithic supports are more prone to multiplicity of steady states than the ceramic ones. For ceramic supports the two-phase piston-flow model is sufficiently accurate.