Detailed modeling of the evaporation and thermal decomposition of urea-water solution in SCR systems

Autor: Vahid Ebrahimian, André Nicolle, C. Habchi
Rok vydání: 2011
Předmět:
Zdroj: AIChE Journal. 58:1998-2009
ISSN: 0001-1541
Popis: This work aims to develop a multi-component evaporation model for droplets of urea-water-solution (UWS) and a thermal decomposition model of urea for automotive exhausts using the Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) systems. In the multi-component evaporation model, the influence of urea on the UWS evaporation is taken into account using a NRTL activity model. The thermal decomposition model is based on a semi-detailed kinetic scheme accounting not only for the production of ammonia (NH3) and isocyanic acid (HNCO), but also for the formation of heavier solid by-products (biuret, cyanuric acid and ammelide). This kinetics model has been validated against gaseous data as well as solid-phase concentration profiles obtained by Lundstroem et al. (2009) and Schaber et al. (2004). Both models have been implemented in IFP-C3D industrial software in order to simulate UWS droplet evaporation and decomposition as well as the formation of solid by-products. It has been shown that the presence of the urea solute has a small influence on the water evaporation rate, but its effect on the UWS temperature is significant. In addition, the contributions of hydrolysis and thermolysis to urea decomposition have been assessed. Finally, the impacts of the heating rate as well as gas-phase chemistry on urea decomposition pathways have been studied in detail. It has been shown that reducing the heating rate of the UWS causes the extent of the polymerization to decrease because of the higher activation energy.
Databáze: OpenAIRE