A CFD study on a vertical chemical vapor deposition reactor for growing carbon nanofibers.pdfVIP

CHERD-1021; No. of chemical engineering research and design x x x 2 0 1 2 xxx–xxx Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Chemical Engineering Research and Design j o u r na l h o me p a ge : w w w. elsev /locate/che rd A CFD study on a vertical chemical vapor deposition reactor for growing carbon nano?bers Pratyush Mishra, Nishith Verma ? Department of Chemical Engineering and Center for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India a b s t r a c t A computational ?uid dynamic CFD study has been carried out to simulate velocity, temperature, and concentration pro?les in a vertical chemical vapor deposition CVD reactor used for growing carbon nano?bers CNFs . CNFs were grown over activated carbon ?bers ACFs wrapped over an especially designed perforated tube which was verti- cally mounted in the reactor. The numerical model analysis incorporated the conservation equations of momentum, energy, and species. Natural convection effects on the heat-transfer and the exothermic heat generation due to the decomposition of benzene were included. The model simulation results revealed that approximately uniform tem- perature and concentration pro?les existed in the ACF-packed bed. In addition, multiple combinations of the heating length and the wall temperature of the reactor were possible to achieve the prescribed CVD temperature. Under the simulated CVD conditions, the present model predicted an average carbon deposition rate of 5 × 10?13 kg/m2 s, which corresponded to the yield of ～0.005 g of CNFs per g of ACFs. The simulation results of this study are important for the optimization of the CVD operating conditions to achieve a high and uniform CNF growth in the vertical reactor. ? 2012 The Institution of Chemical Engineers. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Computational ?uid dynamics CFD ; Chemical vapor deposition CVD ; Carbon nano?bers