After Maria, Mehrdad, and Jonas successfully defended their dissertations earlier this year, Kevin followed suit. He impressed the examination board with both his presentation and his subsequent Q&A session, thus successfully completing his doctoral studies.

In his dissertation, entitled “Exploring Catalytic Reactors using Computational Fluid Dynamics: Insights and Limitations,” Kevin focused on numerical flow simulations of catalytic reactors in order to better understand and predict the conditions within them. Initially, heat source-based simulations were used in large parameter studies to better describe the heat transfer from the reactors and to quantify the influence of different catalyst support structures and various process parameters.

In addition, he collaborated with Harm to design a reactor that could be used in magnetic resonance imaging to measure both the temperature and the gas composition in the gas phase with spatial resolution. This data was used to validate reactive flow simulations (rCFD), which were intended to predict the conditions in the reactor with significantly higher resolution. It was found that the simulations were able to reproduce the characteristics in the reactor well, although differences were observed especially in terms of temperature. This comparison was the first of its kind to compare 3D reactive flow simulations with 3D experimental data. Despite the deviations, it became clear that reactive CFD is a powerful tool for gaining detailed insights into reactors that cannot be obtained with any other method. This marks the start of increased use of rCFD in the investigation of chemical reactors, which, with increasing computing power, will allow completely new insights into reactors in the future, making their optimization and predictability possible.